ster."

It was wonderful. It made one dizzy. He crumpled dresses a good deal,
and he had no particular plan about the work--at first--except to put
each article into the trunk it didn't belong in. But he soon reformed,
in this matter. Not entirely; for, to the last, he would cram into the
satchel sacred to literature any odds and ends of rubbish that he
couldn't find a handy place for elsewhere. When threatened with death
for this, it did not trouble him; he only looked pleasant, saluted with
soldierly grace, said "Wair good," and did it again next day.

He was always busy; kept the rooms tidied up, the boots polished, the
clothes brushed, the wash-basin full of clean water, my dress clothes
laid out and ready for the lecture-hall an hour ahead of time; and he
dressed me from head to heel in spite of my determination to do it
myself, according to my lifelong custom.

He was a born boss, and loved to command, and to jaw and dispute with
inferiors and harry them and bullyrag them. He was fine at the railway
station--yes, he was at his finest there. He would shoulder and plunge
and paw his violent way through the packed multitude of natives with
nineteen coolies at his tail, each bearing a trifle of luggage--one a
trunk, another a parasol, another a shawl, another a fan, and so on; one
article to each, and the longer the procession, the better he was suited
--and he was sure to make for some engaged sleeper and begin to hurl the
owner's things out of it, swearing that it was ours and that there had
been a mistake. Arrived at our own sleeper, he would undo the
bedding-bundles and make the beds and put everything to rights and
shipshape in two minutes; then put his head out at, a window and have a
restful good time abusing his gang of coolies and disputing their bill
until we arrived and made him pay them and stop his noise.

Speaking of noise, he certainly was the noisest little devil in India
--and that is saying much, very much, indeed. I loved him for his noise,
but the family detested him for it. They could not abide it; they could
not get reconciled to it. It humiliated them. As a rule, when we got
within six hundred yards of one of those big railway stations, a mighty
racket of screaming and shrieking and shouting and storming would break
upon us, and I would be happy to myself, and the family would say, with
shame:

"There--that's Satan. Why do you keep him?"

And, sure enough, there in the whirlin