“He seems so very intelligent,” she said to herself with a qualm.
“Now then, for the mussalchi! Tum mussalchi hai, eh?”
“Gee-ha, hazur!”
The mussalchi wore a short cotton coat, a dhoty, and an expression of dejection. On his head was a mere suggestion of a turban—an abject rag. Written upon his face was a hopeless longing to become a bawarchi, which fate forbade. Once a mussalchi, the son of a mussalchi, always a mussalchi, the bearer of hot water and a dish-cloth, the receiver of orders from kitmutgars.
“Consider your mussalchi, Helen! He is engaged to wash the dishes, to keep the silver clean, and the pots and pans. His real mission is to break as many as possible, and to levy large illegal charges upon you monthly for knife-polish and mops. In addition he’ll carry the basket home from the market every morning on his head—the cook, you know, is much too swagger for that! Think he’ll do?”
“I don’t know,” said Helen in unhappy indecision. “What do you think, George?”
“Oh we’ll try him, and I suppose he’ll have to get seven rupees. This is the mallie, the gardener—this gentleman with his hair done up neatly behind.”
“Nice clean-looking man,” remarked Helen, “but oughtn’t he to wear more clothes.”
“Looks like a decent chap. No, I should say not; I never saw a mallie with more on. You see he’s a very superior person, a Brahmin in fact. He wears the sacred string, as well as his beads and his dhoty; do you see it, over his right shoulder and under his left arm. He claims to have been ‘twice born.’ They’re generally of a very respectable jat[[32]] the mallies.”
[32]. Caste.