--'
and many other things which now are hidden from your eyes. However, Mrs.
McIntosh has prepared dinner. Let us come and eat after the fashion of the
people of the country--of whom, by the way, you know nothing."
The native woman dipped her hand in the dish with us. This was wrong. The wife
should always wait until the husband has eaten.
McIntosh Jellaludin apologized, saying:--
"It is an English prejudice which I have not been able to overcome; and she
loves me. Why, I have never been able to understand. I fore-gathered with her
at Jullundur, three years ago, and she has remained with me ever since. I
believe her to be moral, and know her to be skilled in cookery."
He patted the woman's head as he spoke, and she cooed softly. She was not
pretty to look at.
McIntosh never told me what position he had held before his fall.
He was, when sober, a scholar and a gentleman. When drunk, he was rather more
of the first than the second. He used to get drunk about once a week for two
days. On those occasions the native woman tended him while he raved in all
tongues except his own. One day, indeed, he began reciting Atalanta in Calydon,
and went through it to the end, beating time to the swing of the verse with a
bedstead-leg.
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