Page:The Spoilt Child.djvu/96

 Matilall spent his whole time in riotous living: he hardly spent a minute of his day at home: at one time he would be engaged at a picnic, taking part in a theatrical entertainment, or making one of a party of amateur musicians: at another, he would be running about getting up a procession in honour of some local deity, or else absorbed in contemplating a nautch: or again, he would be creating a disturbance, and making unprovoked assaults upon other people. His appetite for stimulants, whether it were ganja, opium or even wine, never failed him, and tobacco of course was in constant demand.

They carried foppery to an extreme, these young Babus, wearing their hair in curls and using powder for their teeth. Their dress was of fine Dacca muslin embroidered with gold lace: on their heads they wore embroidered caps; carried in their hands silk handkerchiefs perfumed with attar of roses, and light canes; and smart English dress shoes with silver buckles adorned their feet. As, moreover, they had no spare time for their regular meals, they carried about with them all sorts of dainty sweetmeats.

Unless an evil disposition is checked at the very outset, it grows worse every day, and in time becomes quite brute-like in its nature: just as when a man has once become enslaved to opium, the quantity he takes tends constantly to increase, so when a man has become addicted to evil habits, the craving for still more grievous courses comes naturally of itself. Matilall and his companions soon began to think the amusements they had hitherto been indulging in too tame: they no longer gave them any special pleasure; so they set to work to devise means for more solid pleasures. They now started sallying forth in a band late in the evenings, setting fire to and plundering houses, setting the thatch of poor people's huts