Even a little party of seven or eight female students from a Hindu college, escorted by the one Christian girl in the establishment, came to see the church. Some of them were carefully dressed with due regard to Hindu fashion, but one or two were advanced women of the modern school, who had introduced several innovations, especially as regards a freer way of arranging the hair. There was something almost pathetic in their interest in what they saw, because the hope of their ever being otherwise than outsiders was, to say the least of it, very distant. It was, however, a distinct mark of progress that the Christian girl who brought them was not only tolerated as a boarder in the college amongst high-caste girls, but she was evidently popular and looked up to.
About a dozen Hindu widows came over one morning to see the church from their home in the next village. They displayed a curious combination of curiosity, apprehension, and interest. One oldish widow literally fled to the other side of the church when she suddenly realised that I was standing behind her. The other women were a good deal amused at her alarm. It was evident that everything that they saw was an enigma to them. Naturally Hindu visitors constantly ask, "Where is the God?" and they are a good deal astonished to find that there is no visible God. The widows were naturally interested in the needlework of the altar cloths and hangings, and asked several questions about it and admired it. Like the lady visitors from the Hindu college, they showed some diversity of taste and opinion in their dress and ornaments and arrangement of hair.
When plague was bad in Poona City many of the well-to-do people left their homes and camped round about Yerandawana. In the evening, when Brahmin ladies were taking a walk with their children, or returning from their daily visit to the Hindu temple in the village, a party of them would now and then come into the church and study it at leisure with great interest. The beautiful figure of the Crucifixion, with Our Lady and St John, above the high altar, worked in silk and gold, they looked at and discussed with much appreciation of the skilled needlework and the richness of the materials. How far the picture itself appealed to them it was difficult to say. Finally, they would gather round the great font, sometimes with caution till they saw that there was no water in it, and listened respectfully to the description of its use.
"Yes, I see, it is for a religious bath," said one of them; and we wondered how long it might be before some of these good women would again gather round the font to receive their own baptism.
CHAPTER IV
INDIAN EMPLOYERS OF LABOUR
Studies of Indian character. Workpeople rude to their employers. Disobedience of female workers. The contractor's pay-day. The labourers cheated. The caretaker of the wood-store; the risk of fire; the caretaker's fidelity; his cheerful poverty; the tyranny of clothes; his prayers. The wood-cutters defrauded.
While the village church was in process of building, many valuable opportunities occurred for getting insight into Indian character. Various grades of men were employed, from the rough coolies who dug the foundations, to the skilled decorator who gilded the cross on the top of the tower. The prosperous Hindu contractor with his clerks and overseers were constantly on the spot, and vendors of wood and stone and other materials were frequently in the compound making bargains about fresh supplies.