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A few rotations of Dhobie and Boy reduce the cuffs to the breadth of an inch, while the collar becomes a circular saw which threatens to take your head off. Then you fling the shirt to your Boy, and the dirzee is in requisition again. Observation of white trousers will lead to similar results.
Maria Graham tells us that in her time "the Dirdjees, or tailors, in Bombay" were "Hindoos of respectable caste," but in these days the Goanese, who has not capacity to be a butler or cook, becomes a Dirzee, and in Bombay I have seen Bunniah Dirzees. Hurree can hold his own against these, I doubt not, but the advancing tide of civilization is surely crumbling down his foundations.
My theory of the Dhobie is a mere speculation, a hypothesis deduced from broad, general principles. I do not pretend to have established it by scientific observation, and am very tolerant towards other theories, especially one which is supported by many competent authorities, and explains the Dhobie by supposing a league between him, the dirzee and the Boy.
All this Sophy had not contrived to manage without assistance and advice; several German ladies had been to call, to inspect, to offer instruction, and to criticise. There was Mrs. She and Sophy had an interesting musical talk, and arranged about duets and practisings; it was she who helped with regard to weeding out the staff, finding substitutes, and engaging a dirzee to mend and make.
Why should a collection of butterflies be called an object of perennial interest and delight, and the Dirzee an unmitigated provocation? They are both of one family. Nothing is unmitigated in this world.
From nine to ten breakfast will fill the breach, and you may allow another hour for the butler's account and the godown; but there is still a yawning chasm of at least two hours between eleven and tiffin. I cannot bridge it. Imagination strikes work. The joyful sound of the Borah's voice brings promise of relief; but no! for what interest can there be in the Borah if you have no Dirzee?
She declares that the Dirzee is the bane of her life, that he is worse than a fly, that she cannot sit down to the piano for five minutes but he comes buzzing round for black thread, or white thread, or mother-o-pearl buttons, or hooks and eyes, that every evening for the last month he has watched her getting ready for to drive, and just as her foot was on the carriage step, has reminded her, with a cough, that his work was finished and he had nothing to do.
And Hurree is not ungrateful, for I observe that, when the dhobie delivers up your clothes in a state which requires the Dirzee, the Dirzee always gives them back in a condition which demands the dhobie. "Another custom is their sitting always on the ground with their knees up to their chins, which I know not how to account for." Daniel Johnson I have been watching Thomas Otway, gardener.
As we know that economy of material is not an object with the dirzee, it has been maintained that there is some connection here. Next the shirt passes into the hands of the Boy, who takes his scissors and carefully pares the ragged edges of the cuffs and collar.
This is how we clothe ourselves in our Indian empire. Our smooth and comfortable khakee suits, our ample pyjamas, the cool white jackets in which we dine, in this way are they brought about. But you must not allow yourself to think of the Dirzee simply as an agency for producing clothes. Life is not made up of such simplicities.
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