80 THE ONE-TAILED BASHAW. 



to make known her wants. She first tried to recognise among 

 the younger of the party some who might have been her foster- 

 children ; but they were all grown out of knowledge, at all 

 events seemed to have no knowledge of her. From the juveniles 

 she then turned to one who, judging by appearance, might have 

 been u le Pere de la Famille ;" brown-coated, round, sleek and 

 shining, he had been busiest of the busy with his pipe, which, 

 by the way, was much longer and, as his petitioner soon found, 

 much more pliant than himself. Fairly tired out with its use, 

 he had laid this curious instrument of repletion, not aside, for 

 he was too much attached to it, but out of the way, and now 

 depending from his chin and bent over his portly stomach, it 

 passed between his legs, and turned up like a tail behind. 

 "Well, this was the one-tailed Bashaw whom our hungry sup- 

 pliant at length ventured to accost, though why in preference 

 to others we cannot say, unless it might have been from the 

 unoccupied consequence of his air. She related her pressing 

 need, a tale which her gaunt figure and famished looks told 

 for her over again ; but twice told, or told a hundred times, it 

 fell, as is usual with tales of like burthen, upon a heedless ear. 

 The little plump brown-coated gentleman coolly brought for- 

 ward his pipe, and under the starveling's very nose began 

 again, not, I promise you, to puff out mere whiffs of smoke, 

 but to draw in, after his peculiar fashion, the remainder of his 

 unfinished and apparently interminable repast. This was very 

 hard-hearted to be sure, but then, in his defence, be it ob- 



