" Let us see.
Alas, no! She entertains a set of lazy bearers, smoking the
hubble-bubble around a palanquin as they wait for a fare; and her
buksheesh may be a cowry or two. By no means is she of the
_nautch_-maidens of Lucknow, who were wont to lighten the hours of
debauched majesty between the tiger-fights and the games of leap-frog;
by no means is she ringed as to her fingers or belled as to her toes;
and though she carries her music wherever she goes, she also carries
a shiny brown baby, slung in a canvas tray between her shoulders.
No excessively voluminous folds of gold-embroidered drapery encumber
her supple limbs; but her skirts are of the scantiest, (what Miss Flora
MacFlimsey would call _skimped_,) and pitifully mean as to quality.
By no means have the imperial looms of Benares contributed to her
professional costume a veil of wondrous fineness and a Nabob's price;
but a narrow red strip of some poor cotton stuff crosses her bosom
like a scarf, and leaves exposed too much of the ruins of once
daintier beauties. A string of glass beads, black and red alternate,
are all her jewels,--save one silver bodkin, all forlorn, in her hair,
and a ring of thin gold wire piercing the right nostril, and, with
an effect completely deforming, encircling the lips. Her teeth and
nails are deeply stained, and the darkness of her eyes is enhanced
by artificial shadows.
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