220 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



not care so very much, when she was nearly maddened, the 

 blood surging in her head with the sight of things going on 

 before her eyes, which she was impotent to prevent or alter 

 immediately. Hands would be clasped round her feet 

 pleading for her intercession with a mistress whom no tears 

 could touch ; that was the hardest of all. The little she 

 could effect would be choked back by the custom of cen- 

 turies, and by treachery always present ; for she knew she 

 was walking on egg shells all the while herself, her own life 

 at the mercy of the merciless. 



It was a reigning favourite who had had her slave sus- 

 pended in the well ; but the tables are turned sometimes, 

 and an ex-favourite finds herself done by as she would have 

 done — has done — in times past. 



Though I heard many a tale of cold-blooded crimes I 

 heard, too, of patient sweetness and of good rendered for 

 evil by slave-girls, even by one whose face and shoulders were 

 not yet healed where her mistress had pinched tiny bits 

 out of her flesh with an instrument ; a ' heathen ' girl, too. 

 But I think of her as a St. Elizabeth ; for when that mistress 

 came to be stricken down by some loathsome disease, and 

 had become dreadful to all, she alone would go near her to 

 minister to her needs. 



In sickness the lot of these women was very hopeless 

 before lady doctors, who are now welcomed, were admitted 

 to the Zenanas. The custom used to be for the sick one to 

 put her tongue through a hole in the door or in the purdah 

 for the hakim (doctor) to inspect. That was the only guide 

 allowed him as to her ailment or condition ; her hand he 

 might not so much as touch. In those days mission women 

 who had grown old in the service, and even young ones, 

 must often have despaired of seeing any difference in their 

 time, though their pluck and zeal were not to be daunted ; 

 but the leaven was working, and now these things are of the 

 long past. Hard to move as India has ever been, I suppose 



