30 SUGAR 



will show you the school, because I am sure you will 

 find the scene within particularly entertaining. 



The schoolhouse is a wooden building of one story, 

 specially designed to be a cool and shady retreat ; it 

 has a gallery approach, and the space within the door- 

 way is given up to one room, which has jalousies for 

 windows. In this room you find the quaintest col- 

 lection of copper-coloured girls and boys, of all ages 

 and sizes. They all have bare legs and arms, and seem 

 but half clad, but since you are so very hot, even in 

 those light clothes specially chosen for the tropics, you 

 feel inclined to envy them their fashion of scant attire. 

 Standing in the midst of this assembly, do you not feel 

 that you are an onlooker at a Juvenile Fancy Dress 

 Fair ? The schoolmistress is a Black, albeit a British 

 subject like yourself ; close under her wing are her two 

 picaninnies, who look very smart in European costume, 

 and answer to the very English names of John and 

 Maria. But can you imagine any more appropriate 

 names than those to which her coolie pupils answer — 

 for instance, Pancheoo, Baldeo, Buddho, Chowa, Dooka- 

 wah, Gangee, Jumney, Ruggoomunden, and Tulsi 

 Singh. No wonder your eyes roam from coolie girls 

 to coolie boys, and back again through the crowd pick- 

 ing out boys from girls ; it certainly is difficult to make 

 up one's mind which sex as a whole presents the weirder 

 appearance. However, apart from numerous varia- 

 tions in the colour of their garments, I expect you have 

 already noticed that all the boys seem, with one 

 accord, to have agreed to wear nothing but a short 

 cotton shirt, and silver bracelets on their wrists ; that 

 the girls have rings in their noses, bangles on their 

 ankles, a bright kerchief headgear, a cotton skirt to 



