Strangely the compliment failed to please. My lord and master stalked out. But at dinner-time he gave me a roll of rupees, on condition that I would not mention Melnotte’s clothes to him until he had to try them on, and that he should only try them on once.
It was in connection with The Lady of Lyons finery that I went into the Burra Bazaar at night, almost at midnight. I had been searching for days for a certain piece of embroidered pine-apple cloth. One day Caloo, my head dhursie, said to me, when he went away at sunset—
“Memsahib want me finish Saturday, memsahib must give rest stuff to-morrow. I not get I cannot make finish.”
I was in despair. That night I drove my husband down to the theatre.
“Are you going home? or are you coming in?”
“I am going to look once more for my pine-apple cloth,” I said meekly.
“Where?”
Ah! that was the question I had hoped to avoid.
“I’ll try at the edge of the Burra Bazaar,” I said. My poor husband looked at me in despair.
“You must come in with me,” he said. I went with him,—obedient wife that I am. But when we reached his dressing-room I began to argue with him gently. At last we compromised; which is about the best thing close friends can do when they differ. I went to the Bazaar, but a friend went with me,—a big blond fellow, who looked the soldier he was, and whom half the natives in Calcutta knew as a fierce “lal-coatie sahib.” Dear friend, he is dead now! He was, a few months ago, a victim of ignoble cholera.