“My wife,” (he used the singular, and sighed)—“you have no idea what difficulty I have in getting my wife to try a new dish. With her it is always mutton, mutton, mutton! She has been brought up on mutton, and Indian women have so little enterprise. She will not try my dishes.”
“Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear,” I quoted in sympathy, and he sighed again.
“Our Indian women are very backward,” he went on. “Now, there is my retired groom, my livery man—what a woman his English wife is! How finished! What pleasantness! How much nicer a home she makes for him than I can ever get! I will show you the difference.”
He called an attendant who had been keeping his eye on me from behind a glass door, and presently the attendant returned with heavy gold ornaments—bracelets, anklets, and necklaces—thickly sprinkled with small turquoises and pearls.
“I gave these jewels as presents to my wife,” he said. “They are my own design too. I bought the pearls cheap when the plague was very bad here, and people were glad to sell everything.”
I commended this one evidence of ancestral thrift.
“Then I took the pearls and turquoises and gold to Paris,” he went on, “and drew out a design for the Parisian jewellers to follow. You see the result. What grace! What finish I You cannot get finish in the East. It is the same with our women. They are backward; they have no finish.”
By a mere slip of the tongue I said I greatly admired what I had seen of Hindu ladies, and added something about seclusion and purdah.
“Hindu ladies!” he cried indignantly. “They don’t understand what purdah is. They might just as well live shamelessly in public. It is only Mohammedan ladies who practise strict purdah, and seclude themselves with absolute delicacy and refinement.”
I assured him I had supposed no less, and his aspect cleared again. Resuming his lightsome smile, he continued—