“Four eight, baboo—there!”
“Ah, sir, I cannot. Believe me they coss five eight to buy!”
“Look here, baboo—I’ll give you five rupees apiece for six of those shisham wood chairs, every one as good as this, and I’ll pay you when you send them—that’s thirty rupees—and not another pice! Helen, be careful of these steps.”
“To what address, sir? Will to-morrow morning be sufficient early, sir?”
“George!” exclaimed Helen, as they reached the outer world of Bow Bazar, “what a horrid little cheat of a man! Did you hear him say at first that they cost seven four to make?”
“Oh, my dear,” young Browne responded, superiorly. “That’s a trifle! You don’t know the baboo.”
“Well!” said his wife, admiringly, “I don’t know how you kept your patience, George!”
Whereat Mr. Browne looked still more superior, and informed Mrs. Browne that the only way to deal with these fellows was to chaff ’em; make up your mind in the beginning that you’re going to be done in the eye, and act accordingly. They always score, he added, with true Anglo-Indian resignation.
They bought a table next, from a very fat old gentleman—simply clad—in a beard and a dhoty.[[19]] The beard and the dhoty were much the same colour, and both fell so abundantly about his person that it would be difficult to say which was most useful to him as an article of apparel. And his moral obliquity was concealed under more rolls and pads of oily-brown adipose tissue than could often be seen in Bow Bazar. He must have been a rascal, as young Browne said, or being a Hindu he wouldn’t have had a beard.
[19]. Cloth for legs.