130 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



four very pale gamboge corners ; and how beautifully that 

 sheet was laundered ! The best had indeed been done with 

 it, but it takes more than a little boiling and bleaching to 

 get turmeric stains out completely ; still, if we had not been 

 looking for them, it might have passed muster. 



To save the dhoby much needless perjuring of himself, 

 which he was already beginning upon, Mrs. E. told him that 

 she knew how the marks came to be there, but I have for- 

 gotten whether any further justice was meted out to him, 

 as well as what was done with the sheet. Very likely he 

 walked off with that, though there was no more risk of 

 infection from it than from the rest of the things or from 

 the man himself ; we had been running the same risk all 

 along without knowing it. And so it was always : some- 

 times one knew of the danger, sometimes one did not — that 

 was all the difference, and one soon learned not to worry. 



As to discharging the dhoby for his villainy, in the hope 

 of finding one with better principles, the chances were of 

 a distinction without any difference ; for every one of them 

 lived in the dhoby village, where all were of a trade, and 

 more or less distantly related to each other, a man's calling 

 being hereditary in India : what he is that will his sons be, 

 and his son's sons, to the twentieth generation. I am 

 speaking of the peasant class, which is unaffected by Western 

 influences. It used to be the same in all classes, but there 

 are changes ; the ' old order ' is surely giving ' place to the 

 new/ The Anglo-Indians of an earlier day would scarcely 

 know it for the same land were they to find themselves back 

 in India now. 



However, some things are stationary, and amongst them 

 may be notably reckoned the use of those great flat stones 

 of satin-smooth surface which are the main part of the 

 dhoby' s stock-in-trade — heirlooms in his family, moreover — 

 whereon one's property is banged in order to cleanse it. 

 The bigger articles are treated singly, smaller ones, such 



