urn to her kindred.--Not she! the durwan,
grim and incorruptible, has his orders; she cannot pass the gate. Oho!
then immediately she dries up; no "fount," and Baby famishing. You try
ass's milk; it does not agree with Baby; besides, it costs a rupee a
pint. You try a goat; she does not agree with Baby, for she butts him
treacherously, and, leaping over his prostrate body, scampers, like
Leigh Hunt's pig in Smithfield Market, up all manner of figurative
streets. Then you send for Dhye, and say, "Milk, or I shave your head!"
Milk or death! And, lo, a miracle!--the "fount" again!--Baby is saved.

What was, then, the conjuration and the mighty magic? In the folds
of her _saree_ the _dhye_ conceals leaves of _chambeli_, the Indian
jessamine, roots of _dhallapee_, the jungle radish. She chews the
_chambeli_, and hungry Baby, struggling for the "fount," is insulted
with apples of Sodom; she swallows a portion of _dhallapee_, and he is
regaled as with the melting melons of Ceylon.

* * * * *

Some fine afternoon your _ayah_ takes your little Johnny to stroll by
the river's bank,--to watch the green budgerows, as they glide, pulled
by singing _dandees_ (so the boatmen of Ganges are called) up to
Patna,--to watch the brown corpses, as they float silently down from
Benares. At night the ayah returns, wringing her hands. Where is your
merry darling? She knows not. _O Khodabund_, go ask the evil spirits! O
Sahib, go cry unto Gunga,--go accuse the greedy river, and say to the
envious waters, "Give back my boy!" She had left him sitting on a stone,
she says, counting the sailing corpses, while she went to find him a
blue-jay's nest among the rocks; when she returned to the stone,--no
Jonnee Sahib! "My golden image, who hath snatched him away? He that
skipped and hummed like a singing-top, where is he gone?"--A month after
that, your dandees capture a crocodile, and from his heathen maw recover
a familiar coral necklace with an inscription on the clasp,--"To Johnny,
on his birth-day." A pair of little silver bangles, whose jocund
jingling had once been happy household music to some poor Hindoo mother,
have kept the necklace company.

* * * * *

Over against the gate of our compound the Baboo's walks are bright with
roses, and ixoras, and the creeping nagatallis; the Baboo's park is
shady with banians, and fragrant with sandal-trees, and imposing with
tall peepuls, and