When the Chota Lord Sahib was announced,
Kailas Balm ran panting and puffing and trembling to the door, and led
in a friend of mine, in disguise, with repeated salaams, bowing low at
each step, and walking backward as best he could. He had his old family
shawl spread over a hard wooden chair, and he asked the Lord Sahib to be
seated. He then made a high. flown speech in Urdu, the ancient Court
language of the Sahibs, and presented on the golden salver a string of
gold mohurs, the last relics of his broken fortune. The old family
servant Ganesh, with an expression of awe bordering on terror, stood
behind with the scent-sprinkler, drenching the Lord Sahib, touching him
gingerly from time to time with the otto-of-roses from the filigree box.
Kailas Babu repeatedly expressed his regret at not being able to receive
His Honour Bahadur with all the ancestral magnificence of his own family
estate at Nayanjore. There he could have welcomed him properly with due
ceremonial. But in Calcutta he was a mere stranger and sojourner-in fact
a fish out of water.
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