134 THE COBRA BUNGALOW 



gets no wages, but he sells the jasmine flowers and 

 the mangoes and guavas, and he grows chillies 

 and brinjals, and so fills the stomachs of himself 

 and his little grandson and is contented. If you 

 ask him where the Seth has gone, he replies," " Who 

 knows ? " His debt has gone with his creditor, " gone 

 glimmering through the dream of things that were," 

 and he has no desire to recall them. 



A civil or military officer from the station, taking 

 a solitary walk, sometimes finds himself at the Cobra 

 Bungalow, and turns in to wander among its old 

 trees and unswept paths, obstructed by overgrown 

 and untended shrubs, and wonders how it got its 

 name. Then he pauses at the whitewashed shrine 

 and notes that the god-stone has been freshly painted 

 red and that chaplets of faded flowers he before it. 

 But the old Malee approaches with a meek salaam 

 and a posy of jasmine and marigolds and warns 

 him that there is a cobra in the shrine. 



