Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/368

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346
WINTER INDIA

nade Hotel in Bombay, and that he spent much time there. He offered to telegraph to his brother-ruler of Indore, or to any native state we might wish to visit. He would even take us around Jeypore and show us the sights, since he had nothing else to do that day. He would take us to the shops—and then all suspicions crystallized without this democratic raja adding: "I will take you to the best shops. I am not common man after commission." This latest form of tout, the princely one of the table d'hôte, was such an amusing climax to our touting experiences that we could hardly keep serious countenances before the clumsy confidence-man and his accomplice. His tongue ran on and on, in sheer joy in its running. "I want not commissions on what you buy. I want not money in this world—only friends, and weeping when I am dead." We could not tell how much conspiracy there was between this pair and the solferino landlord, who had been so persistent about our taking a guide; but the solferino one handed the Nawab into a carriage with a great flourish just as our "fitton" drew up. "You are going to the museum?" asked the Nawab. "So are we"; and he was whirled away without escort or outriders. He stood on the museum steps dumbly staring when our carriage went past him toward the city gates, and when we did return to the museum, two hours later, the Nawab was waiting and showed the strain of that long suspense. The pair followed us from case to case for a while, profuse in praises of what we looked at longest, voluble until we put direct questions to them about the methods and processes of