thinks. Please don't say that I told you this. The Foreign Secretary knows what a high opinion I have of the Rajas: indeed he often employs me to whitewash them when they get into scrapes. "A little playful, perhaps, but no more loyal Prince in India!" This is the kind of thing I put into the Annual Administration Reports of the Agencies, and I stick to it. Playful no doubt, but a more loyal class than the Rajas there is not in India. They have built their houses of cards on the thin crust of British Rule that now covers the crater, and they are ever ready to pour a pannikin of water into a crack to quench the explosive forces rumbling below.
The amiable chief in whose house I am staying to-day is exceedingly simple in his habits. At an early hour he issues from the zenana and joins two or three of his Thakores, or barons, who are on duty at Court, in the morning draught of opium. They sit in a circle, and a servant in the centre goes round and pours the kasumbha out of a brass bowl and through a woollen cloth into their hands, out of which they lap it up. Then a cardamum
