“Poor cooey!” said Helen, advancing to attempt a familiarity, but the cow put down her head and made such a violent lunge at her that she beat a hasty and undignified retreat. This was partly on account of the calf, which stood a little way off, but well within the maternal vision, and it was quite an unreasonable demonstration, as the calf was stuffed, and put there to act upon the cow’s imagination only. This is a necessary expedient to ensure milk in India from a cow that has no calf of her own; it is a painful imposition, but uniformly successful. The fact is one of reputation, as being the only one invariably rejected by travellers as a lively lie, whereas they are known to swallow greedily much larger fictions than stuffed calves.
From an upper window, shortly after, Helen saw the cow’s morning toilet being performed by the bearer. And it was an instructive sight to see this solemn functionary holding at arm’s length the utmost end of her tail, and with art and precision improving its appearance.
In the cool of the evening after dinner, the two Brownes sat together in the shadow of the pillars of their upper veranda, and Helen told the story of her adventure in the compound. Overhead the pigeons cooed of their day’s doings, the pony neighed from his stable in the expectation of his content. A light wind stirred the palms where they stood against the stars, the smoke of the mallie’s pipal leaves curled up faintly from his roof where he dwelt beside the gate. Below, in the black shadow of the godowns, easeful figures sat or moved, the subdued tones of their parley hardly came to the upper veranda. They had rice and rest and the comfortable hubble-bubble. And the sahib and the memsahib devised how they might circumvent these humble people in all their unlawful doings, till the air grew chill with the dew, and the young moon showed over their neighbour’s tamarind tree.
CHAPTER IX.
MRS. BROWNE’S ayah was a little Mussulman woman of about thirty-five, with bright eyes and an expression of great worldly wisdom upon her small, square, high-boned face. She dressed somewhat variously, but her official garments were a short jacket and a striped cotton petticoat, a string of beads round her neck, silver bangles on her arms and ankles, hoops in her ears, and a small gold button in her right nostril. This last bit of coquetry affected Helen uncomfortably for some time. Her name was Chua, signifying “a rat,” and her heathen sponsors showed rather a fine discrimination in giving it to her. She was very like one. It would be easy to fancy her nibbling in the dark, or making unwarrantable investigations when honest people were asleep. When Chua was engaged and questioned upon the subject of remuneration, she salaamed very humbly, and said, “What the memsahib pleases,” which was ten rupees. At this Chua’s countenance fell, for most of the ayahs of her acquaintance received twelve. Accepting the fact, however, that her mistress was not a “burra memsahib”[[48]] from whom much might be expected, but a “chota memsahib”[[49]] from whom little could be extracted, she went away content, and spread her mat in the women’s place in the mosque and bowed many times to the west as the sun went down, and paid at least four annas to the moulvi[[50]] who had helped her to this good fortune.
[48]. Great memsahib.
[49]. Little memsahib.
[50]. Priest.
Chua abode in her own house, as is the custom of ayahs with family ties. She was married—her husband was a kitmutgar. They lived in a bustee in the very middle of Calcutta, where dwelt several other kitmutgars and their wives, a dhoby and a number of goats, and Chua walked out every morning to her work. Then home at twelve to cook her food and sleep, then back at four for further duty until after dinner. She never breakfasted before starting in the morning, but she carried with her always a small square tin box from which she refreshed herself surreptitiously at intervals. Inside the box was only a rolled-up betel leaf, and inside the leaf a dab of white paste; but it was to Chua what the hubble-bubble was to Abdul, her husband, a great and comfortable source of meditation upon the goodness of Allah, and the easiest form of extortion to be practised upon her lawful taskmistress.