Just now a _palkee-gharree_, cheapest of one-horse vehicles, with
but one half-naked syce running at the pony's head, and never a
footman near, passes the spanking Arabs; the plain turban of a
respectable accountant in the Honorable Company's coal office at
Garden Reach shows between the Venetian slats of the little window,
and lo! our fine Baboo steps out of his slippers, and standing
barefoot in the common dust of Cossitollah,--dust that has been
churned by all the pigs'-feet that ply that promiscuous thoroughfare,--
humbly touches first the vulgar ground and then his elegant turban,
murmuring a pious _Namaskarum_; for the respectable accountant in the
Honorable Company's coal office is, like Mutty Loll, a Kooleen
Brahmin,--only a little more so. Caste is God, and Mamoul is his
prophet!
At the gate-lodge of the Baboo's garden-house on the Durumtollah
Road, a gray and withered hag, all crippled and leprosied, sits
_durhna_.
What may that be?
Be patient; you shall know.
When the Baboo was as yet a youth, his uncle Rajinda, the pride of
the Mullicks, died of cholera, and the administration of the estate
devolved upon our free-thinking Kalidas. Of course there were
mortgages to foreclose, and delinquent debtors to stir up. A certain
small shopkeeper of the China Bazaar was responsible to the concern
for a few thousand rupees, wherewith he had been accommodated by
Uncle Rajinda as a basis for certain operations in seersuckers and
castor-oil, that had yielded no returns.
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