Page:Letters from India Vol 2.pdf/101

 admired himself in the most polished language. ‘I doing my best to keep up with him,’ and then he and all his followers salaamed. Then Emily’s and my jemadars, with our hurkarus; Ariff was excessively grand indeed. Then came the sirdar with all his followers, the men who carry the palankeens and pull our punkahs; then the musalchees, who have the charge of lighting the house, and so on to five processions more, classes of people whose existence I had never heard of, all equally proud of their appearance. Last came the most degraded caste of all, the mihturs, or people who sweep out the rooms. None of the other servants would take anything from their hands, and, in compliment to that feeling, they all had different dresses of dark purple. This shocked me, so I made a point of admiring these dresses, more particularly as their head man, as if in mockery of himself, brought in Chance wearing a little gold coat. No high caste servant will touch a dog.

I am in a shocking way about Gazelle. He has become more attractive and more exclusively attached than ever; but he has grown enormously, too large for anyone to carry, even