"That's done its work and taken down the swelling. I wish it had taken out the colour as well. We'll see what cold water will do for you next, with a little vinegar added." She turned to the intruder and addressed him in his own tongue, although he knew English better than Ramachetty the butler. "Well! why don't you get on with your hunt for your lost cousin?"
She drifted towards the door by which he had entered, carrying the broom in one hand and the beef in the other. Disgust and horror were written on the face of the Hindu as he eyed the two loathsome objects, and he slipped further away moving up the room. Whether unconsciously or with deep design she had cut off his retreat completely, and there was no chance of retiring if he wished to keep his distance from the two caste-contaminating objects.
"I can't have you here all day," she cried, irritably. "Come! begin your search. Go and look under that table."
She flourished the broom in the direction of a table covered with a cloth of gaudy colours where she sat to write the menus for the master's dinner. He hesitated, his zeal had evaporated; and the object of his domiciliary visit was almost lost sight of in the contemplation of the sweeper's broom and the flesh of the sacred cow.
"Come! get on!" continued Mrs. Hulver, moving towards him. "I want to clear the room of strangers. It's not good for the sick man. My son is not so bad but what he can get up if he chooses and turn you out. Go and look under his bed. That's your next place. Dearie me!" she said, lapsing into English again. "It seems as if this coolie expected me to do his work! He began with impudence, but if he doesn't take care he'll end with something else. As William—that was my third—used to say: 'Dine on sauciness and you'll sup on sorrow.'"
She took a step or two forward in the direction of her visitor. He retreated, carefully gauging the distance between his own precious person and the various untouchable objects he had unwittingly approached. The information that the hero of the canteen fight was able to rise from his bed if he chose and act the part of chucker-out was not reassuring. He was allowed no time for reflection.
"Go and look under the bed next. Lift the blanket that hangs down," she said to the sweeper. "Let the gentleman see that we haven't got his grandmother hidden under my son's bed."
Again she flourished the broom, this time at the woman, and she waived the raw beef at the seeker.
"Go on! Don't be afraid. William won't hurt you!"
She advanced, and Sooba, more perturbed than he had been for many a day, avoided the bed and its attendant sweeper, and backed towards the open door of the bedroom, the only available retreat afforded from this awful person. She followed and the hunter became the hunted. Armed with her terrible weapons she drove him from pillar to post, obliging him to carry out his inquisition to its last detail, and look into holes and corners with eyes that could see nothing but that caste-destroying broom and beef. After chasing him round the bedroom she forced him to enter the bathroom, where, in his confusion, he knocked over the sweeper's basket; and she kept him there whilst she explained that the place contained cover for nothing larger than a frog.