[26]. Own country.
“I’ve put it down, George.”
“Now the kitmutgar—he’s another old servant of mine—the gentleman who has just salaamed to you. You see by his dress that he’s a Mussulman. No self-respecting Hindu, as you’ve read in books of travel which occasionally contain a truth—will wait on you at table. Observe his nether garments how they differ from the bearer’s. The B. you see wears a dhoty.”
“A kind of twisted sheet,” remarked Helen.
“Precisely. And this man a regular divided skirt. The thing he wears on his head is not a dinner plate covered with white cotton, as one naturally imagines, but another form of Mussulman millinery—I’m sure I don’t know what. But you’re never to let him appear in your presence without it. It would be rank disrespect.
“He is also an old servant,” Mr. Browne went on, “because servants do get old in the course of time if one doesn’t get rid of them, and I’ve given up trying to get rid of this one. He’s a regular old granny, as you can see from his face; he’s infuriatingly incompetent—always poking things at a man that a man doesn’t want when a man’s got a liver. But he doesn’t understand being told to go. I dismissed him every day for a week last hot weather: he didn’t allow it to interfere with him in the least—turned up behind my chair next morning as regularly as ever—chose to regard it as a pleasantry of the sahib’s. When I went to England, to get engaged to you, my dear, I told him I desired never to look upon his face again. It was the first one I saw when the ship reached the P. and O. jetty. And there was a smile on it! What could I do! And that very night he shot me in the shirt-front with a soda-water bottle. I hand him over to you, my dear—you’ll find he’ll stay.”
“I like him,” said Mrs. Browne, “and I think his conduct has been very devoted, George. And he doesn’t cheat?”
“He has no particular opportunity. Now for the cook. This is the cook, I take it. You see he wears nothing on his head but his hair, and that’s cut short. Also he wears his particular strip of muslin draped about his shoulders, toga-wise. Also he is of a different cast of countenance, broader, higher cheek-bones, more benevolent. Remotely he’s got a strain of Chinese blood in him—he’s probably Moog from Chittagong.”
“Tum bawarchi hai, eh?”[[27]]
[27]. You are the cook?