“Nonsense, Maggie,” I said rather roughly; “go in to your missie baba. Cedar jao, Gharri-wallah.”
We had left the hotel, and were living in a bungalow. The drive to the gate was long and winding. When the durwan swung open the gate, a woman ran out from the shrubbery. Maggie pulled the gharri door open and climbed in.
“I go please with memsahib,” said the girl.
“Aren’t you frightened?”
“I more frightened stay safe bungalow, know memsahib gone harm.”
Maggie sat opposite me. Her hands were meekly folded upon her saried knees. When we passed into the dark, questionable streets of the native quarter, Maggie did what she had never done before—she came and sat beside me. The dark grew denser: she covered my miserable, useless little hand with her great, faithful, black hand. A pigeon cried; and a sick woman, lying inside one of the tall, mysterious houses, moaned. Maggie was trembling.
“Bungalow jao, sais,” I said.
A lady, who had lived most of her life in Calcutta, said to me one night, at a rather crowded dinner table: “Is it true that you went into the Burra Bazaar with only native servants and at midnight?”
“Almost true,” I replied. “It was an hour or more earlier.”
“What a horrid thing for you to do!” was the frank rejoinder.