“Did you enjoy it?”
“Oh yes! so much.”
“Didn’t you feel wicked?”
“A little. But that will wear off, I think.”
Wear off it did. I became an inveterate jinrickshawist.
Did I shorten the life of any coolie? I don’t know. I provided many a coolie with an overflowing bowl of rice and curry, that made his life momentarily very endurable.
Would they better live longer and be hungrier?
Can we give them other, better work?
Ah! those are questions for statesmen, not for women.
The next day, when we left our rooms in the early morning, we found John, the Madrassi, waiting for us. We were taking him to Calcutta with us, and he was all anerve to start. John was, with one exception, the handsomest native man I ever saw. He was nearly six feet tall, and carried himself with superb dignity. He was fastidiously devoted to his own personal appearance, and we took great delight in his toilets. I remember him so well, as he stood outside our door, in the pale November dawn. He was dressed in the sheerest of white robes, or rather draperies; the upper cloth was of soft native silk; he wore a huge turban, snowy white, with one thin line of gold running through it; and in his ears he wore two hoops of flashing rubies. John never developed a desire to carry parcels, but it was his delight to carry our almost two-year-old baby. What pictures they used to make! She was a big dimpled baby, very white, with bright blue eyes and gleaming yellow curls. John was as black as a Madrassi can be, which is very black indeed; but he was always as spotless in his attire as baby Mona herself.