I
stayed with my good-natured host two days and nights, picking up, in
the mean while, much curious information touching the cultivation and
manufacture in which he was occupied. Like most persons of his
calling, he was an ardent sportsman. The early hours of the morning he
gave almost daily to a stroll with his gun; and the first evening I
passed with him he invited me, in startlingly piebald phraseology, to
accompany him on the morrow. "Be up by _top dage_," said he: "we will
have _chhoti haziri_, and then a _chal_ over the _khets_ for some
_shikar_" Why he did not prefer to say "gun-fire," "tea and toast,"
"run," "fields," and "game," probably he could not have told himself.
His way of peppering his English with Urdu was characteristic of his
class, and till I got accustomed to it I found it somewhat perplexing.
If he had known me all his life he could not have been more friendly.
Yet his kindness and hospitality were not exceptional things in the
India of a quarter of a century ago. All is changed there now--whether
much for the better I am skeptical. Twenty-two hours after they were
due my missing bearers made their appearance. Arrived at Ghazeepore, I
addressed a complaint to the postmaster-general. Thereupon two sides
of a large sheet of paper were spread for me with base official
circumlocution, through the darkness of which I groped out, after some
labor, the audacious libel that the blame, if there were any, rested
entirely with myself.
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