"Bend low," he whispered. The Englishman bent.
"_Bunnia_--mission school--expelled--_box-wallah_ (peddler)--Ceylon pearl
merchant--all mine English education--outcasted, and made up name Dana
Da--England with American thought-reading man and--and--you gave me ten
rupees several times--I gave the Sahib's bearer two-eight a month for
cats--little, little cats. I wrote, and he put them about--very clever
man. Very few kittens now in the bazaar. Ask Lone Sahib's sweeper's wife."
So saying, Dana Da gasped and passed away into a land where, if all be
true, there are no materializations and the making of new creeds is
discouraged.
But consider the gorgeous simplicity of it all!
_In the House of Suddhoo_
A stone's throw out on either hand
From that well-ordered road we tread,
And all the world is wild and strange;
_Churel_ and ghoul and _Djinn_ and sprite
Shall bear us company to-night,
For we have reached the Oldest Land
Wherein the Powers of Darkness range.
_--From the Dusk to the Dawn._
The house of Suddhoo, near the Taksali Gate, is two storied, with four
carved windows of old brown wood, and a flat roof. You may recognize it by
five red handprints arranged like the Five of Diamonds on the whitewash
between the upper windows. Bhagwan Dass, the bunnia, and a man who says he
gets his living by seal-cutting live in the lower story with a troop of
wives, servants, friends, and retainers.
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