Page:The Spoilt Child.djvu/165



did not think much of Baburam Babu's shraddha. The rain, as the proverb has it, was out of all proportion to the thunder. Oil fell on a good many heads that were oiled already, while heads that were dry and destitute of oil only got cracked. Their disputation was all the profit that the pandits got. The uneducated city Brahmans had it all their own way. The harsh discipline of all kinds to which pandits subject themselves, creates in them a stubbornness of nature: they follow their own opinions and do not agree with all and everything they find. The Brahmans of a lower order, habitúes of the city, suit their conversation to the minds of the Babus: in the words of the proverb, they adapt their strokes to the quality of the wood. If it suits them to be Gosains, Gosains they can be; and the characters they can assume are as varied as the ingredients of a curry mixture; is it surprising then that they generally get the best of everything? The managers of the shraddha had taken every precaution to fill their own pockets: they were keen chiefly on their own share of the gifts: what did it matter to them whether the pandits or the poor received anything worth mentioning? There was a great flourish of trumpets over things that would be matter of public observation and could not be avoided, but equal consideration was not shown throughout. Management such as that is a mere playing to the gallery.

The stir which the shraddha had caused gradually died away.