Page:Rajmohan's Wife.djvu/99

Rh kitchen, but apparently all access to it was barred from this side and few were the females of the household who had ever set their feet on it.

A thick and massive door led to the "godown," as the mahal was called by the males, directly from outside. Bare but high walls, the summits of which were secured against the invasion of human feet by broken fragments of bottles enclosed it on three sides. On the fourth stood the single row of one-storied apartments which it contained. The walls of the apartments were all of unusual thickness, the doors small and plated with iron, and not a window was to be seen. The use to which these "godowns" were put was known to be that of storehouses for all sorts of things. A vast garden of Supari trees interspersed with Bakul, stood on one side of the building, and being enclosed on all sides by brick walls and containing a well-filled tank in the middle, composed the khirki of the household. The passage to it lay through the precincts of the cook, from which a small door opened on the garden.

The reader will be good enough to ascend in our company, through a flight of dark and narrow stairs of solid brickwork to the upper story of the andarmahal, properly so called, that which formed the second section of the large edifice a view of which we have placed before him. We invite him to enter a no less unapproached and unapproachable region than the bedchamber of