“Do you often ‘lick’ them, George?”
“Except this once I never have. Neither does anybody else, except a few ill-conditioned young cubs, who haven’t been out long enough to understand the native and think they can kick him about to advantage. But decent servants never stay with such men. Indeed they can’t get ’em. You’ve got to have a good character to get good servants, and there isn’t a sahib in Calcutta that hasn’t a reputation in the bazar. The bearer knows perfectly well I wouldn’t touch a hair of his head, and if the bearer went out with cholera to-morrow I could get half a dozen as good in his place. On the other hand, probably all the kitmutgar-lok despise me for keeping such a poor servant as the Kit, and I’d have a difficulty in getting a better one.”
“Curious!” said Helen.
“Yes. The syce, my dear, will desire you to pay for quite twice as much grain and grass as the pony consumes, and for a time you will do it. Bye-and-bye you will acquire the wisdom of a serpent and cut him accordingly. In the meantime he’s bound to have as much sugar-cane on hand as you want to feed the pony with, at a fixed charge of four annas a month. Don’t forget that the syce’s tulub is eight rupees.
“This very smug and smiling person is the dhoby, the washerwoman. He is an unmitigated rascal. There is no palliation for anything he does. He carries off your dirty linen every week in a very big pack on a very little donkey, and brings it home on the same, beating the donkey all the way there and all the way back. He mismatches your garments with other people’s, he washes them with country soap that smells to heaven if you don’t watch him. His custom in cleaning them is to beat them violently between two large and jagged stones. He combines all the vices of his profession upon the civilized globe; but I’m afraid you’ll have to find out for yourself, dear. Put down the dhoby at ten.
“This excessively modest person is the bheesty, who brings us water every day in a goat-skin. He isn’t used to polite society, but he’s a very worthy and hard-working sort. He’s only a ticca-bheesty. I fancy several people about here use him. You see his sole business in life is carrying water about in goat-skins. So we only give him three rupees.
“The sweeper is out on the veranda. Very properly he doesn’t venture into our presence. He is of very low caste—does the sweeping and all the menial work, you know. You are never to see or speak to him, or you’ll be lowered in the respect of the compound. The sweeper is a very poor sort of person—he is the only servant in the place that will eat the remains of our food. He gets six rupees.”
“Is that all?” asked Helen. “I’m sure I don’t know them apart.”
“That’s all, except your ayah, who isn’t here, and a durwan to keep the door, whom we’ll get when we’re richer, and a dhurzie to mend our clothes, whom we’ll get when they begin to wear out. May they be dismissed now?”
