Through narrow, dingy miles of scrambling bazaar, redolent of all the
unfragrances of that dusty, sweaty, greasy, jabbering quarter, I rolled
in my light buggy, behind a nimble Arab mare, to a suburban retreat on
the eastern skirt of the Black Town, where, just beyond a cluster of
mean huts of the _sooa-logue_, the low laboring rabble, I found Karlee's
genteel abode, and was refreshed by the contrast it presented to the
hovel of his next neighbor, whose single windowless apartment, and walls
of alternate rows of straw and reeds, plastered with mud, proclaimed
most unpicturesquely the hard fate of him who springs from the soles of
Brahma's feet. Karlee's walls were of solid clay of substantial
thickness. His floor was raised a foot or two above the ground, and
there was a neatly thatched roof over all, swelling out in an elongated
dome, and oddly resembling an inverted boat. As in the rural districts,
Karlee had fenced in his privacy with a thick hedge of clipped bamboo
surmounting a quadrangular embankment. Before the grateful porch two
beautiful tamarind-trees and a palm bestowed their kindly shade, and in
the hedge the bamboos, with their golden stems and bright green leaves,
rustled cheerfully.
On the other side of the road, and shyly retired from it in a close
bamboo covert, dwelt Karlee's partner in the curiosity and general fancy
line, the sharp sircar, with whom (both being _soodras_,[12] and of the
same sect) his social relations were intimate and free.
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