“Indeed you won't!” cried Mrs. Ulswater. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
Ram Nad bowed his head, pulled his beard, and covered himself with meekness. I suggested to Mrs. Ulswater that there was a Cingalese point of view.
“Surely,” Ram Nad, ineffably mild. “We say no more, excellent Mrs. Ulswater. Other orphans are elsewhere to be found and the vow accomplished. But now, if permitted, I go, and return soon with gifts of fruit plucked in the gardens of my house, that our happiness may be complete as the meeting of long-parted friends, pleasant as to the bee is the honey of the flower.”
It was all gammon about his house. He had no property except his trick outfit in a basket, his moderate but amusing clothes, and a lien on a cobblestone in the market. Mrs. Ulswater observed him quietly. I didn't make out what she thought of his handsome remarks.
He was rowed ashore in the gig, and came back later in a misshaped Cingalese canoe, kilted fore and aft, with two coolies for rowers, who promptly departed. He fished pomegranates and pineapples out of his basket, and was very pleasant. He begged to be allowed to sleep on a deck rug beneath our palatial awning. He said it was the custom of the country. So it was, granted a rug and awning were handy. He talked a number of kinds of gammon, and he knew I knew it was gammon. But, then, I allowed that a Cingalese of his age and acquirements had a right to be mythological in his statements.
Oh, Ram Nad, friend of my earlier days! I'm free to admit your standards of virtuous conduct were ever in some respects obscure, not to say too much for me.
CHAPTER XII—RAM NAD CONTINUED
MY family at midnight lay asleep in their staterooms. The Indian moon shone on the Violetta, which lay lifting slowly with the swell. The watchman sat forward. Ram Nad, with his chief garment wrapped about his head, was stretched on a rug on the lee side and just above the portholes of the stateroom occupied by Susannah.