The audience is complete in all the picturesqueness of mixed baba-logue.  In the front row, chattering brown ayahs, gay with red sarees and nose-rings, sit on the floor, holding in their laps pale, tender babies, fair-haired and blue-eyed, lace-swaddled, coral-clasped, and amber-studded.  Behind these, on high chairs, are the striplings of three years and upward, vociferous and kicking under the hand-punkahs of their patient bhearers.  Tall fellows are these bhearers, with fierce moustaches, but gentle eyes,—­a sort of nursery lions whom a little child can lead.  On each side are small chocolate-colored heathens, in a sort of short chemises, silver-bangled as to their wrists and ankles, and already with the caste-mark on the foreheads of some of them,—­shy, demure younglings, just learning all the awful significance of the word Sahib, who have been brought from mysterious homes by fond ayahs, and smuggled in through back-stairs influence, or boldly introduced by the durwan under the glorifying patronage of that terrible Hastings Clive.

Back of all are Dhobee, the washerman, and Dirzce, the tailor, and Mehter, the sweeper, and Mussalehee, the torch-boy, and Metranee, the scullion,—­and all the rest of the household riff-raffry.  There is much clapping of hands, and happy wah-wah-ing, wherefrom you conclude that Hastings Clive’s birth-day is at least one good result of his being born at all.

The Sahib baba-logue have a lively share in several of the native festivals.  The Hoolee, for instance, is their high carnival of fun, when they pelt their elders and each other with the red powder of the mhindee, and repel laughing assaults with smart charges of rose-water fired from busy little squirts.  During the illumination of the Duwallee, they receive from the servants presents of fantastic toys, and search in the compounds by moonlight for the flower of the tree that never blossoms, and for the soul of a snake, whence comes to the finder good luck for the rest of his life.

These are the traditional sports of the baba-logue; but they are ingenious in inventing others, wherein, from time to time, the imitative faculty, of the native child especially, is tragically manifested.

When the Nawab, Shumsh-ud-deen, was hung at Delhi for hiring a sowar to assassinate Mr. Fraser, the British Commissioner, the country population round about were seized with the news as with the coming of a dragon or a destroying army; and the British Lion was the Bogy, the Black Douglas, in whose name poor ryots’ wives scared refractory brats into trembling obedience.  Not far from Delhi was a village school, where were many small boys,—­so many Asiatic frogs-in-a-well,—­to whom “the news of the day” was full of terrible portent.  Once, when they were tired of foot-ball, and the shuttlecock had grown heavy on their hands, the cry was, “What shall we play next?” And one daring little fellow—­whose father had been to Delhi with his rent, and had told how the Nawab met his kismut (his fate) so quietly, that the gold-embroidered slippers did not fall from his feet—­cried, “Let us play hanging the Nawab! and I will be the Nawab; and Kama, here, shall be Kurreim Khan, the sowar; and Joota shall be Metcalfe Sahib, the magistrate; and the rest of you shall be the sahibs, and the sepoys, and the priests.”