United States or Saudi Arabia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
'Above on tallest trees remote Green Ayahs perched alone; And all night long the Mussah moaned In melancholy tone. Oh, don't you know Lear's poem? Can't we illustrate it?" "Cherry, Cherry, you'll be half dead to-morrow." "Well, if I am, this is the real fun. I shan't see the destruction." Lance had her arm in his grip to take her over the bridge over the wall, when up rushed Kitty Varley.
"This street we are in might be a part of New York, or of London, so far as buildings go, but the old Egyptian fashions and people, the open booths, and the queer old street venders are all mixed through it, somehow, until it seems as unreal as a dream. "Yes," laughed Hope; "it makes me think of a girl dressed in a Paris gown, but wearing a mishmak, like our ayahs on the ship."
Of course, much desultory tomtomry and wild troubadouring behind the curtain make the occasion musical. The audience is complete in all the picturesqueness of mixed baba-logue. In the front row, chattering brown ayahs, gay with red sarees and nose-rings, sit on the floor, holding in their laps pale, tender babies, fair-haired and blue-eyed, lace-swaddled, coral-clasped, and amber-studded.
Indian people have a lot of secrets that we know nothing about; they use spells, and poisons, and incantations that no English person can understand, and they can charm snakes. I've read about it in books. Arthur and Peggy were born in India, and it's my opinion that they are bewitched. Perhaps the ayahs did it when they were in their cradles.
The servants do not live in their master's house, but in small huts near. The place where they live is called "the compound." When English people travel they do not go in carriages, but in palanquins. A palanquin is like a child's cot, only larger; and there a traveller can sleep at his ease. The men who carry the palanquins are called "Bearers." The nurses are called Ayahs.
She had looked upon a native as a toy fit to play with, to break and throw away. Did they not all, behind their seeming tolerance and Christian principles, hide an equal depreciation? Was she even as bad as some? How many men revealed to their syces their darkest moods, their lowest passions? How many women were to their ayahs subjects for contemptuous Bazaar gossip.
It was necessary that each of the ayahs should be wife to one of the men servants, but it is always possible to make a temporary arrangement of that sort to accommodate the customs of a high official. So the present Mrs. Hichens was to be established in the tent, very comfortably matted as to the floor and furnished with all necessary appointments of a satisfying quality and wealthy appearance.
The ladies went into the room that served as a nursery, and with the ayahs and other female servants carried the children down into the storeroom. "I would much rather be up there," Isobel said to Mrs. Doolan; "we could load the muskets for them, and I don't think it would be anything like so bad if we could see what was going on as being cooped up below fancying the worst all the time."
It is never a wise plan to leave children to the entire care of ayahs. A very profitable hour may be spent in directing games when the little people build with their bricks gates and bridges, houses and castles, and the older ones listen with interest to some story of adventure.
Then all of a sudden she was ordered, or she ordered her physician to order her, an immediate departure from that perilous climate, and she came back to England with her three-year-old son, two Ayahs, and four European servants, leaving her husband, Lord Maulevrier, Governor of the Madras Presidency, to finish the term of his service in an enforced widowhood.
Word Of The Day