176 JUNGLE PEACE 



and bracelets and a gorgeous nose-button if he 

 could save enough shillings, I almost said 

 rupees, and ultimately she would go and cut 

 grass with the other women, and each day take 

 her little baby astride her hip down to the 

 water and wash it, as she, so very short a time 

 ago, had been washed. 



And so, close to the wonder windows, we had 

 seen a marriage of strange peoples, who were 

 yet of our own old Aryan stock; whose cere- 

 monies were already ancient when the Christians 

 first kept faith, now transported to a new land 

 where life was infinitely easier for them than in 

 their own overcrowded villages; immigrants to 

 the tropical hinterland where they rubbed elbows 

 with idle Africans and stolid Red Indians. And 

 I was glad of all their strange symbolic doings, 

 for these showed imagination and a love of the 

 long past in time and the distant in space. 



I wished a good wish for Budhany, our little 

 milkmaid, and forgot all in the sound, dreamless 

 sleep which comes each night at Kalacoon. 



