"Queer things for
breakfast!" Khudabakhsh and his mate mentally reflect, exchanging
glances, but without moving a muscle. Breakfast is served, and my
friend sees before her just what she meant to order. On one dish reeks
the bony contour of a chicken, grinning thankfulness for extinction at
every joint, and on a second dish towers a pile of things like small
wooden trenchers pressed flat. Of course she has been puzzled, she
self-flatteringly concludes, by some less common names of the very
common viands which lie displayed before her. By and by, however, she
discovers that gharib-parwar and dharm-antar are not articles of
gastronomic indulgence, at least beyond the borders of those islands
of the blest where slices of cold missionary come on with the dessert.
When fully aware of her little blunder she marvels, and not
unreasonably, that any one should address a lady as "cherisher of the
poor" or as "incarnation of justice," rather than as plain "madam;"
and she thinks it equally strange that any one should so beat about
the bush as to substitute polysyllables of compliment for _han_, the
much more expeditious equivalent of "yes."
Everything went on smoothly and monotonously enough till I was within
twenty miles, roughly computed, of Ghazeepore. At this point, on
reaching the end of a stage, my bearers woke me to say there was no
relay waiting for them.
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