Page:On the Coromandel Coast.djvu/132

120 did not forget to purchase betel leaf and sweets as a reward.

It was a busy bustling scene, this morning meeting of the fort and town. The vendors of the market-stuffs sat by their wares brushing away the flies, disputing the price, fanam by fanam, cash by cash, gesticulating, talking, and refusing the offered sums, even as their hands were extended to receive the money. The thrifty housewives depreciated the goods as vehemently. Yet in spite of the chaffering and noise, good-nature prevailed between the dark and the fair, and all were friendly.

The Portuguese ladies, whose husbands had forsaken Mylapore and had come to live in Gentoo town, mingled with the English women and gossiped as they bargained. They wore the black lace mantilla over their heads, just as Taylor describes their descendants in later years, and they prided themselves on their blue blood and their name of castee.1 The common tongue of the household and the market was Portuguese; it was spoken by slaves and servants, mistress and shopkeeper. On all sides it echoed, with Tamil and English interspersed, as the news of the day was exchanged.

There was no post, no English mail, except at very rare intervals. The afternoon parties at the garden-houses, approaching weddings, the last case of sickness and death were discussed with absorbing interest. The latest movements of the terrible Mahrattas, greatly exaggerated by the native imagination, were related; and the last tricks and delinquencies of the household slaves were confided by each housekeeper to her neighbour. Gossip and scandal, chaffering and bargaining filled the air. The sight of a diamond merchant passing along in his palanquin from the larger mart at the sea- gate reminded them that business was over and that their