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The ladies, who have been resting indoors during the great heat of the day, pass us on their way to their tennis-parties or other engagements, while, in charge of picturesquely-clad Burmese or Indian ayahs, the little ones take their evening walk. Groups of Burmans of the better class with their wives promenade the cool avenues in happy contentment, or wend their way towards Dalhousie Park.
It was only the other day I went home with them in the Surat no, the Massilia and she was crawling about on her hands and knees among the ayahs. 'Used to call me the 'Tick Tack Sahib' because I showed her my watch. And that was in Sixty-seven no, Seventy. Good God, how time flies! I'm an old man.
Sitting upright, pallid and eager, she gazed at the superscription, her face growing radiant with hope and joy. At length she rose and, turning about, looked forward along the deck, gay with its groups in light clothing, its covering awnings, and its little children with their picturesque Indian ayahs.
Hauksbee feebly, and then let none blame her weakness after the strain of long watching she broke down, and covered her face with her hands. The ayahs on the threshold snored peacefully. There was a rattle of 'rickshaw wheels below, the clash of an opening door, a heavy step on the stairs, and Mrs. Delville entered to find Mrs. Bent screaming for the Doctor as she ran round the room. Mrs.
The ayahs' wages are also very high, amounting to from fifteen to twenty rupees a month; they are certainly, however, more efficient than the same class of persons in Bengal, undertaking to wash silk stockings, lace, and fine muslin; they are, generally speaking, well-conducted and respectable.
Sankey hated being troubled, and the ayahs always found that any complaints to her recoiled upon themselves, for she always took the part of her children, and insisted that the fault lay on the side of the nurses and not on them.
The man is called in, and succeeds in disposing of some of his wares, ribbons, laces, or silks; and the ayah, besides having obliged the lady and the pedler, enjoys a small modicum of satisfaction herself who would grudge it? in pocketing the dustôôree a discount of two pice, or half an anna on each rupee. There are ayahs of various castes.
The procession now is a procession of clerks to their homes when their day's work is over; and the music is a ragtime selection by the Band of the Madras Guards on the Marina, close by, with ayahs and children around. We are in the twentieth century; but for a moment we have lived in the past.
This is principally a man's club, but here also on many days a band plays, and the sight is a pretty one indeed as the children and their ayahs play about the lawn, while their parents enjoy their tea at the little tables scattered about it, before the falling dew drives the little ones homewards, and their elders to the club-house for a game of billiards or a chat.
What with troops in old jackets, which had once been scarlet, Lascars with their curly black hair, and dark handsome features, yellow men, sickly women, and half-caste children, with their Hindoo Ayahs, tigers, lions, turtles, cows, sheep, goats, and pigs, on the booms and main deck, the vessel was in a strange motley of confusion.
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