Page:Between the twilights being studies of Indian women by one of themselves (IA betweentwilights00soraiala).pdf/61

Rh teaches them, “the worship of the Might-be.”

At 9 o’clock they come hastening to the hour of prayer, like the birds and lizards of the Moslem legend: each little devotee, lips pursed in serious earnestness, is carrying her “basket of worship,” and sits cross-legged to unpack it—an incense-burner, the bowl for Ganges water, flowers, bits of half-eaten fruit and vegetables, the sacrificial powder, often a remnant of some favourite saree, the Ganges mud with which to make her “idol”—all this she unpacks gravely, daintily, moulding her lump of clay into a cone. … Now she will make comparison with her neighbour, a little wistfully, perhaps, perhaps exultingly: often she shares her gifts. … Anything may be given to the God; the teaching here is to give what costs something, and when the pooja is over, the Pujari carries round a food-collecting plate for the animals within the gates, and the crows on the housetops. Now she is threading garlands of the sacred white jasmine, and the Priests have come for the chaunting.

The children sit in rows facing each other,