rhaps your gray-beard circar, privileged by virtue of high caste
and faithful service, will take upon himself to condole with you:
"_Khodabund_" he will say, "better luck next time; Heaven is not always
with one's paternal hopes; let us trust that my lord may live to say it
might have been worse; let us pray that the _baba's_ bridal necklace may
be as gay as rubies and as light as lilies, and that she may die before
her husband."

But if to the existing number of your _suntoshums_--the jewels that
hang on the Mem Sahib's bosom--a man-child is added, ah, then there is
merry-making in the verandas, and happy salaaming on the stairs; and in
the fulness of his Hindoo Sary-Gampness, which counts the Sahib blessed
that hath "his quiver full of sich," he says, _Ap-ki kullejee kaisa
burri ho-jaga! Khoda rukho ki beebi-ka kullejee bhee itni burri
hoga,--Gurreeb-purwan!_ "How large my lord's liver is about to grow!
God grant to the Mem Sahib, my exalted lady, a liver likewise large,--O
favored protector of the poor!" The happiness and honors which should
follow upon the birth of a male child being figuratively comprehended in
that enlargement of the liver whence comes the good digestion for which
alone life is worth the living.

Many and grievous perils do environ baby-life by the Ganges,--perils of
_dry_ nurses, perils by wolves, perils by crocodiles, perils by the Evil
Eye, perils by kidnappers, perils by cobras, perils by devils.

You are living at one of the up-country stations, where the freer air of
the jungle imparts to babes and sucklings a voracious appetite. Besides
your own _dhye_, brought from Calcutta, there is not another wet-nurse
to be had, for love or money. Immediately Dhye strikes for higher wages.
The Baba Sahib, she says, has defiled her rice; yesterday he put
his foot into her curry; to-day he washes the monkey's tail in her
consecrated lotah. What shall she do? she has lost caste; the presents
to the Brahmins, that her reinstatement will cost her, will consume all
her earnings from the beginning. _Gurreeb-purwan_, O munificent and
merciful! what shall she do? She strikes for higher wages.--But you are
hard-hearted and hard-headed; you will not pay,--by Gunga, not another
pice! by Latchtmee, not one cowry more!--Oh, then she will leave; with
a heavy heart she will turn her back on the blessed baby; she will pour
dust upon her head before the Mem Sahib, at whose door her disgrace
shall lie, and she will ret