Janoo and Azizun are
Kashmiris, Ladies of the City, and theirs was an ancient and more or less
honorable profession; but Azizun has since married a medical student from the
North-West and has settled down to a most respectable life somewhere near
Bareilly. Bhagwan Dass is an extortionate and an adulterator. He is very rich.
The man who is supposed to get his living by seal-cutting pretends to be very
poor.
This lets you know as much as is necessary of the four principal tenants in
the house of Suddhoo. Then there is Me, of course; but I am only the chorus
that comes in at the end to explain things. So I do not count.
Suddhoo was not clever. The man who pretended to cut seals was the cleverest
of them all--Bhagwan Dass only knew how to lie--except Janoo. She was also
beautiful, but that was her own affair.
Suddhoo's son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, and old Suddhoo was
troubled. The seal-cutter man heard of Suddhoo's anxiety and made capital out
of it. He was abreast of the times. He got a friend in Peshawar to telegraph
daily accounts of the son's health.
And here the story begins.
Suddhoo's cousin's son told me, one evening, that Suddhoo wanted to see me;
that he was too old and feeble to come personally, and that I should be
conferring an everlasting honor on the House of Suddhoo if I went to him.
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