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The Q.M.G., we found, had collected our staff of servants together, and was otherwise pushing on our preparations as fast as the dignity and importance of the undertaking would admit. The staff consisted of khidmutgar, bawurchie, bhistie, dhobie, and mihtar; or, in plain English, butler, cook, water-carrier, washerman, and sweeper.
There were the dhobie and bearer, the waterman with his goatskin waterbag, the washerman who washed my blue Chinese garments as white as his own, the syce who did not collect grass, the cook who sent me ten bad eggs in three days, and the Christian Madrasi, the laziest rascal in Bhamo, who early confessed to me his change of faith and the transformation it had effected in the future prospects of his soul.
Lobo, enjoying the position of first violinist in a string band which performs at Parsee weddings and on other festive occasions. Noblesse oblige; you cannot evade the necessity for clean shirt-fronts, ill able as your precarious income may be to meet it. In these circumstances a Dhobie with good connections is what you require.
And as Hurree goes by on his way home, his prophetic soul tells him that his son will not live the happy and independent life which has fallen to his lot. But he has a bulwark still in the dhobie, for the "Tailor and Outfitter" will not repair frayed cuffs, and the sewing machine cannot put on buttons.
He no longer cares to go about in the scant clothing which satisfies a Hindu. He would not wish his little children to run about naked, like those of his Hindu neighbours. He must have clean clothes for Sunday, and though he can do a little rough washing on his own account, he needs the skill of the dhobie for some of his wife's garments and his white Sunday suit.
It is irritating to discover, when you are dressing in a hurry, that he has put your studs into the upper flap of your shirt front; but I am not sure it does not try your patience more to find out, as you brush your teeth, that he has replenished your tooth-powder box from a bottle of Gregory's mixture. But Dhobie day is his opportunity.
A Brahmin priest is placidly sunning himself on the river platform of the temple over the dome of which hangs the foliage of a peepul tree. A dhobie is washing the shirts of a sahib in the stream that once was dyed with the blood of the sahibs. There is no monument here, no superfluous reminder of the terrible tragedy.
Lobo has a few clothes of his own, and then, as I have hinted, the Dhobie may exchange them by mistake, for he is uneducated and has much to remember; but, if you occasionally suffer in this way, you gain in another, for Mr. Lobo's family are skilful with the needle, and I have sent a torn garment to the washing which returned skilfully repaired.
Let it be said, for thy wisdom to unravel, that therefore Leh Shin felt mirth in his mind, knowing that the heart of his foe was wrung as the Dhobie wrings the soiled garment." Shiraz fell silent and looked up from the floor at the face of his master, who got up and stretched himself. "Is my bath ready, Shiraz?"
This feeling is the germ from which the Dhobie has grown. Day after day he has stood before that great black stone and wreaked his rage upon shirt and trowser and coat, and coat and trowser and shirt.
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