restorative.  If a pedler comes to the door with his box and bundles, he looks up, and spying the ayah in the veranda or at the window, he calls out:  ’Is anything wanted for Mem-Sahib or the babas?  Tell the lady I have beautiful things to shew.’  Away trips the ayah to her mistress, and good-naturedly, or perhaps—­no, it shall be good-naturedly—­lays the discovery before her that some trifle is wanted.  The man is called in, and succeeds in disposing of some of his wares, ribbons, laces, or silks; and the ayah, besides having obliged the lady and the pedler, enjoys a small modicum of satisfaction herself—­who would grudge it?—­in pocketing the dustooree—­a discount of two pice, or half an anna on each rupee.

There are ayahs of various castes.  The Portuguese ayahs (Roman Catholic Christians, born in the country) are no doubt the most intelligent and useful; but they are more expensive than the Mussulman and Lall Beggies, and are therefore not so frequently employed:  indeed, it is only in the neighbourhood of Calcutta that they are procurable at all.  As the Hindostanee women neither knit nor sew, they seem to devote their energies exclusively to their infant charge.  The baba is their work and their play, the exercise of their thoughts, the substance of their dreams.  He is the only book they read; and the only expansion their minds know is from the unfolding of the pages of his character.  They are proud of that baba, and proud of themselves for being his.  What a sight it is, the ayah coming in at the dessert, in her rustling silks and transparent muslins—­so stately in her humility, so smilingly self-satisfied—­surrounded by the children, and holding in her dark, smooth, jewelled arms the son and heir of the family, whom she presents to papa to get a bit of cake or sweetmeat!

This is a grand moment for the ayah.  Are not the children hers?  Have they not lain upon her bosom all their little lives?  And have not the charms which she detected with the first glance of her glittering eye, been developed under her care into the marvels now before the company?  But the more tranquil and permanent happiness of the ayah is enjoyed while she is watching alone the opening of her buds of beauty, and steeping their slumbering senses in the sweet wild music of her country.  I still sometimes hear in fancy her cradle-song humming in my own Old Indian ear as I am falling asleep—­although many a long year has passed since I heard it in reality, and many a long league is now between me and the land of the dear, good, black, comical, kindly ayah.  Let me try whether I cannot render it, even loosely, in our own strong Anglo-Saxon tongue, from the musical, melting Hindostanee:—­

    Sleep on, sleep on, my baba dear! 
    Thy faithful slave is watching near. 
    The cradle wherein my babe I fondle,
    Is made of the rare and bright-red sandal;[3]
    And the string with which I am rocking my lord,
    Is a gay and glittering silken cord.