wanted me to go up there to get place as ayah, and said, 'You quick, sharp girl, and know English very well; you easily get good place and make plenty money.' But I such a foolish woman I would not go. I write and tell him, 'No, I can't come, for Sind such a long way off, and I cannot leave the children.' I 'plenty proud' then. I give up all for the children. But now what good? I know your language—What use? To blow the fire? I only a miserable woman, fit to go to cook-room and cook the dinner. So go down in the world, a poor woman: (not much good to have plenty in head, and empty pocket!) but if I 'd been a man I might now be a Fouzdar.[1]
I was at Kolapore[2] at the time of the mutiny, and we had to run away in the middle of the night; but I've told you before all about that. Then seven years ago my mother died (she was ninety when she died), and we came back to live at Poona.
Not long afterwards my daughter was married there, and I was so happy and pleased I gave a feast then to three hundred people, and we had music and dancing, and my son, he so proud, he dancing from morning to night, and running here and there arranging everything; and on that day, I said, 'Throw the doors open, and any beggar, any poor person come here, give them what they like to eat, for whoever comes shall have enough, since there's no more work for me in the world.' So, thinking I should be able to leave service, and give up work, I spent all the money I had left. That was not very much, for in sending my son to school I'd spent a great deal. He was such a beauty boy—tall, straight, handsome—and so clever. They used to say he looked more like my brother than my son, and he said to me, 'Mammy, you've worked for us all your life, now I'm grown up I'll get a clerk's place and work for you. You shall work no more, but live in my house.' But last year he was drowned in the river. That was my great sad. Since then I couldn't lift up my head. I can't remember things now as I used to do, and all is muddled in my head, six and seven. It makes me sad sometimes to hear you laughing and talking so happy with your father and mother and all your family, when I think of my father, and mother, and brothers, and husband, and son, all dead and gone! No more happy home like that for me. What should I care to live for? I would come to England with you, for I know you would
