"The repast ends more abruptly than it began. The Scindian, as the boa-constrictor, is always torpid after his ample meal, and he holds to the apothegm of the Salernitan school—
'Post prandium est dormiendum.'
You may observe our guest's fat heavy eyelids winking and drooping with progressive somnolency as the time for his siesta draws nigh. He calls for a cup of lukewarm milk—the invariable and offensive conclusion to dinner here; apologizes for leaving us—he must go to his prayers and attend to his guest-house[16]—promises a return to tea in the evening, calls for his horse, mounts it and retires.
"Now that he has gone, perhaps you also, sir, may have 'letters to write.'
"'Ibrahimoo was so full of wine,' remarks Hari Chand, 'with these eyes I saw him almost tumble over his animal. He go to pray! He went to prepare for the evening's work. As for his guest-house, it is called by all the poor around, "House of Hunger." Your honours, I hear, gave him only beer and brandy. You will see him presently return with a donkey's load of bottles. And I am told that he is going to bring his eldest boy. Ah, your honours must button up your pouches now!'
"Here comes the Ameer with some additions to his former escort, Kakoo Mall; a little brown boy five or six years old, a minstrel, and a servant carrying many 'grey-beards.'
"In few parts of the world do you see prettier children than those of the higher class in Scinde. Their features are delicate and harmonious; the forehead is beautifully bombé; the full, rounded cheek shows almost olive-coloured by the side of the silky black curls; and there is an intelligence and a vivacity which you scarcely expect to see in their large, long, lustrous black eyes. Their forms are equal to their faces; for symmetry and finish they might serve as models to the well-provided Murillo or Correggio. And the simplicity of their dress—a skull-cap, a little silk frock like a night-gown, confined with a waist-shawl in which sticks the tiniest of daggers, and a pair of loose slippers—contrasts most advantageously with the dancing-dog costumes with which your good lady, Mr. Bull, invests her younger offspring, or the unsightly jackets and waistcoats conferred upon Billy when breeched. If you like their dress you will also admire their behaviour. The constant habit of society makes them companionable at an age when your progeny is fit for nothing but confinement in a loose box called a nursery. The boy here stands before his father, or sits with him when ordered, more staidly than one of your adults would do. He listens with uncommon gravity to the conversation of his seniors, answers pithily and respectfully when addressed, and never requires to be lectured upon the text, 'Little children are made to be seen and not heard.' At eight years of age he is master of the usages; he will receive you at the door in the absence of his progenitor, hand you to your proper seat in the room, converse with you, compliment you, call for pipes, offer you sweetmeats, invite you to dinner, and dismiss you without failing in a single point. As a boy he is a little man, and his sister in the harem is a little woman. This you may object to on the score of taste; say that it robs childhood of its chief charm, the natural, the innocent, and all that kind of thing. At any rate, you must own that it also preserves us from the very troublesome displays of the said charm in the form of pertness, selfishness, turbulence, and all the unlovely details comprehended in your 'naughtiness'—the Irish 'boldness.'