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60 Mutiny or do anything desperate, but Boggley discouraged me at the outset. "You needn't grin at them so affably," he remarked, "they will only think you are weak in the head." They quite evidently regard me as a poor creature, even Bella, though she humours me and condescends to say "pretty pretty," or "nicey nicey" when I am dressed in the evening. I think she must once have nursed children, for the words she knows are baby words; she always calls me "poor Missy baba" and strokes me! The pani-wallah finds amusement in practising his English on me. When he sees G. come through the compound, he bounds to my room, holds up the chick and announcing "Mees come," retires, stiff with pride at his knowledge of the language.

I have learned a few useful Hindustani words. Qui hai means roughly, "Is anyone there?" and you cry that instead of ringing a bell, and it brings the instant response "Huzoor," and a servant springs from nowhere to do your bidding. Lao means "bring" and jao "go." You never say "please," and you learn the words in a cross tone—that is, if you want to be really Anglo-Indian. Radical M.P.'s of course will learn "please" at once, if there is such a word in the language, which I