Even when I shut my
enlightened eyes the sound was marvelously like that of a fast game.
Entered angrily the faithful partner of my sorrows, Kadir Baksh.
"This bungalow is very bad and low-caste! No wonder the Presence was disturbed
and is speckled. Three sets of doolie-bearers came to the bungalow late last
night when I was sleeping outside, and said that it was their custom to rest
in the rooms set apart for the English people! What honor has the khansamah?
They tried to enter, but I told them to go. No wonder, if these Oorias have
been here, that the Presence is sorely spotted. It is shame, and the work of a
dirty man!"
Kadir Baksh did not say that he had taken from each gang two annas for rent in
advance, and then, beyond my earshot, had beaten them with the big green
umbrella whose use I could never before divine. But Kadir Baksh has no notions
of morality.
There was an interview with the khansamah, but as he promptly lost his head,
wrath gave place to pity, and pity led to a long conversation, in the course
of which he put the fat Engineer-Sahib's tragic death in three separate
stations--two of them fifty miles away. The third shift was to Calcutta, and
there the Sahib died while driving a dogcart.
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