trunks and shifting their weight from one foot to the other. At the word of command, the hugest of them tossed his trunk in salute, made a court courtesy, and, nosing the ground, picked up the tiniest silver three-anna piece. The elephants flicked their flanks with fly-brushes of green twigs as they stood guard benignly over the hall where jewelers were hammering, welding, and carving gold and silver ornaments. Veiled women sat around a merchant of cheaper gauds, who, with a small prentice boy, cracked or filed off the old bracelets and soldered on the new.
It was then ten o'clock in the morning, the heat was terrific, the sun blinding, and we had spent five busy hours abroad. The dak bangla was an asylum of coolness and shade, and after a bountiful tiffin the keeper presented his account-book, we entered the items, added up the bill, and settled our score with the British government in India. The keeper bowed profoundly, and wished the "ladyships" a good health, when a fee had gone his way; and then, in strict order of social precedence, the cook and the coolie, the sweeper, the water-carrier, and what not, presented themselves, bowing, at different doors. They rubbed their palms upward across their faces, extended them to us, wobbling their fingers as if gathering grains of rice, and whined: "Prissint! Prissint! Memsahib!" We gave to each one, and, without stopping to bow or to thank us, each one looked greedily into the other's palm and went away loudly wrangling—a first encounter with the most cringing, graceless, shameless tribe of alms-seekers in all the world.
