Last week a lizard dropped on his foot, and yesterday he saw a cow on
his right hand three times,--he had always been so lucky!
Now, time, place, and mood being favorable, I called for the company
hookah, and, extending the long Chinese chair, smoked myself to sleep
under the punka. My nap was a long one, and when I awoke there watched
and waited Karlee, tenderly patient, with the fly-flapper.
In the hospitalities thus far so handsomely extended to me, the reader
will recognize and appreciate an extraordinary display of liberal ideas,
for which, however, considering the sound common sense of my
affectionate old bhearer, I was not altogether unprepared; but when, his
little grandson being gone, he conducted me into another room, to
partake of what he humbly styled a _chota khana_, a trifle of luncheon,
my astonishment exceeded my gratification. I doubt if such a thing had
ever before happened in the life of a bhearer.
On the floor a broad sheet, of spotless whiteness, was spread, and
beside it a narrow mattress of striped seersucker, very clean and cool,
and with a double cushion at the head to support the elbow; on this my
host invited me to recline. Here then were table and chair, but as yet
the board was bare.
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