“O lay me in a little pit,
  With a marvle thtone to cover it,
  And keearve thereon a turkle-dove,
  That the world may know I died for love!”

I left India in consequence of that child.

But for the true Anglo-Indian type of brat, at all points a complete “torn-down,” “dislikeable and rod-worthy,” as Mrs. Mackenzie describes it, there is nothing among nursery nuisances comparable to the Civil-Service child of eight or ten years, whose father, a “Company’s Bad Bargain,” in the Mint, or the Supreme Court, or the Marine Office, draws per mensem enough to set his brat up in the usual servile surroundings of such small despots.  Deriving the only education it ever gets directly from its personal attendants, this young monster of bad temper, bad manners, and bad language becomes precociously proficient in overbearing ways, and voluble in Hindostanee Billingsgate, before it has acquired enough of its ancestral tongue to frame the simplest sentence.  It bullies its bhearer; it bangs distractingly on the tom-tom; it surfeits itself to an apoplectic point with pish-pash; it burns its mouth with hot curry, and bawls; it indulges in horrid Hindostanee songs, whereof the burden will not bear translation; it insults whatever is most sacred to the caste attachments of its attendants; the Moab of ayahs is its wash-pot, over an Edom of bhearers will it cast out its shoe; it slaps the mouth of a gray-haired khansaman with its slipper, and dips its poodle’s paws in a Mohammedan kitmudgar’s rice; it calls a learned Pundit an asal ulu, an egregious owl; it says to a high-caste circar, “Shut up, you pig!” and to an illustrious moonshee, “Hi, toom junglee-wallah!” Whereat its fond mamma, to whom Bengalee, Hindostanee, and Sanscrit are alike sealed books of Babel, claps the hands of her heart, and crying, Wah, wah! in all the innocence of her philological deficiency, blesses the fine animal spirits of her darling Hastings Clive.

“Soono, you sooa, loom kis-wasti omara bukri not bring?” says Hastings Clive, whose English is apt to figure among his Hindostanee like Brahmins in a regiment of Sepoys,—­that is, one Brahmin to every twenty low-caste fellows.

The Hon. Mrs. Wellesley Gough.—­Wellesley dear, do listen to that darling Hastings Clive, how sweetly he prattles!  What did he say then?  If one could only learn that delightful Hindostanee, so that one could converse with one’s dear Hastings Clive! Do tell me what he said.

The Hon. Wellesley Gough, of the Company’s Bad Bargains.—­Literally interpreted, my dearest Maud, our darling Hastings Clive sweetly remarked, “I say, you pig, why in thunder don’t you fetch my goat into the parlor?”

The Hon. Mrs. Wellesley Gough, of the Hon. Mr. Wellesley Gough’s Bad Bargains.—­Oh, isn’t he clever?

Hastings Clive.—­Jou, you haremzeada! Bukri na munkta, nimuk-aram!