A VERY WORTHY AND HARD-WORKING SORT.
“Oh, yes, please!” said Helen, and “Bahut atcha? Tum jane sucta,”[[33]] remarked her husband, whereat they salaamed and departed in single file.
[33]. You may go.
“But George,” said Helen, “they come, with my ayah at eleven, to eighty-five rupees a month! Almost seven pounds! I thought servants were cheap in India!”
“No, dear, they’re not; at least, not in Calcutta. And these are the very least we can have to be at all comfortable.”
The two Brownes looked at each other with a slight shade of domestic anxiety. This was dispelled by the foolish old consideration of how little anything really mattered, now that they were one Browne, and presently they were disporting themselves behind the pony on the Maidan, leaving the cares of their household to those who were most concerned in them.
CHAPTER VIII.
A WEEK later Helen took over the accounts. In the meantime she had learned to count rupees and annas, pi and pice, also a few words of that tongue in which orders are given in Calcutta. She arose on the seventh morning of her tenure of office rigidly determined that the office should no longer be a sinecure. She would drop curiosity and pleasure, and assume discipline, righteousness and understanding. She would make a stand. She would deal justly, but she would make a stand. It would be after George had gone to office. When he came home, tired with tea affairs, he would not be compelled to rack his brain further with the day’s marketing. He would see that the lady he had made Mrs. Browne was capable of more than driving about in a tum-tum and writing enthusiastic letters home about the beauties of Calcutta.
George went to office. The kitmutgar softly removed the blue and white breakfast things. Outside the door, in the “bottle khana,” the mussalchi, squatting, washed them in an earthen bowl with a mop-stick. It occurred to Helen that she might as well begin by going to look at the mussalchi, and she did. She looked at him with a somewhat severe expression, thereby causing him dismay and terror. She walked all round the mussalchi, but found nothing about him to criticise. “But, probably,” thought she, as she went back to the dining-room, “my looking at him had its moral effect.” Then she sent for the cook.