The native side of the movement is the work
of a limited class, a microscopic minority, as Lord Dufferin described it,
when compared with the people proper, but still a very interesting class,
seeing that it is of our own creation. It is composed almost entirely of those
of the literary or clerkly castes who have received an English education."
"Surely that's a very important class. Its members must be the ordained
leaders of popular thought."
"Anywhere else they might be leaders, but they have no social weight here."
Pagett laughed. "That's an epigrammatic way of putting it, Orde."
"Is it? Let's see," said the Deputy Commissioner of Amara, striding into the
sunshine toward a half-naked gardener potting roses. He took the man's hoe,
and went to a rain-scarped bank at the bottom of the garden.
"Come here, Pagett," he said, and cut at the sun-baked soil. After three
strokes there rolled from under the blade of the hoe the half of a clanking
skeleton that settled at Pagett's feet in an unseemly jumble of bones. The
M.P. drew back.
"Our houses are built on cemeteries," said Orde. "There are scores of
thousands of graves within ten miles."
Pagett was contemplating the skull with the awed fascination of a man who has
but little to do with the dead.
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