sh
hospitality if it would have been accepted; but Brahmins ignored them,
and they never seemed to associate on equal terms with anyone except
members of their own caste, or those below it.

When the father of the family retired on his pension, he returned to
his own district and prepared to settle down. Besides a house in the
city, they had a sufficiently habitable one in a large garden in a
village in the Poona district. But the old grandfather had died in
this country house, and was said to haunt it. Servants refused to stay
there, and none of the family would live there. So they pulled it down
and prepared to build a new house in another garden.

I had an opportunity of watching the whole progress of this project,
and it gave me a good deal of insight into the character that Hinduism
creates. Babaji having seen something of English ways during his term
of office as collector, prepared to build the sort of house which
would suit an Englishman. It was conveniently planned, and had many
doors and windows and large verandahs. He also employed a contractor
of some repute. The house was quickly built, and would have been an
excellent one in all respects but for certain economies which Babaji
insisted on, to the great indignation of the contractor. He bought a
set of old doors and windows from a house in Bombay which was being
pulled down, and had them adapted to his new bungalow. And having been
accustomed to deal with petty contractors, with whom it is customary
to carry on a perpetual war of words, he tried the same plan with his
present builder, and whenever he came to inspect, railed at him for
faulty work and bad materials.

I asked him why he did this, when there was nothing to justify his
complaints. He said that it was the only way of keeping men up to
their work. There is also an underlying idea that if the cry of faulty
construction is uttered with sufficient persistency, it will give an
excuse for cutting down the final bill. Babaji made an effort in this
direction also, but the contractor said that unless he got his money
he should take the matter into court, and refused to have anything
more to do with the job. After much fierce wrangling, the latter came
triumphantly one day to show me the cheque which Babaji had just
written for him.

So Babaji was left to finish off his bungalow in his own way, and I
think that on the whole he was rather glad, because he could now do
things more in accordance with his