So our Baboo, in a curt
_chit_, (that is, note, or _sheet_ of paper, as near as a Bengalee
can come to the word,) bade the small speculator of China Bazaar
come down forthwith with the rupees.
But, behold you now, "he had paid," he said. "By the Holy Ganges and
the Blessed Cow! by the turban of his father and the veil of his
mother! restitution had been made long ago," the old man said;
"and the soul of Uncle Rajinda, the pride of the Mullicks, had no
reason to be disquieted for the rupees, though the seersuckers had
been but vanity, and the castor-oil vexation of spirit."
"Produce the documents," said the Baboo, with a business-like
impassibility that in Wall Street would have made him a great bear;--
"where are the receipts?"
"My Lord, I know not. Prostrating my unworthy turban beneath the
lovely lilies of your feet, I swear to my _gureeb purwar_, the
destitute-and-humble-protecting lord, by the Holy Water and the
Blessed Cow, by the beard of my father and the veil of my mother,
that I settled the little account long ago!"
That unhappy speculator in seersuckers and castor-oil died in prison,
and a _gooroo_ (that is, a spiritual teacher) feed by the Baboo,
desolated his last hour with the assurance that he should
transmigrate into the bodies of seven generations of _gharree_-horses,
and drag _feringhee_ sailormen, in a state of beer, from the ghauts
to the punch-houses, all his miserable lives.
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