The Satan mentioned at the head of this chapter was not our Satan, but the other one.  Our Satan was lost to us.  In these later days he had passed out of our life—­lamented by me, and sincerely.  I was missing him; I am missing him yet, after all these months.  He was an astonishing creature to fly around and do things.  He didn’t always do them quite right, but he did them, and did them suddenly.  There was no time wasted.  You would say: 

“Pack the trunks and bags, Satan.”

“Wair good” (very good).

Then there would be a brief sound of thrashing and slashing and humming and buzzing, and a spectacle as of a whirlwind spinning gowns and jackets and coats and boots and things through the air, and then with bow and touch—­

“Awready, master.”

It was wonderful.  It made one dizzy.  He crumpled dresses a good deal, and he had no particular plan about the work—­at first—­except to put each article into the trunk it didn’t belong in.  But he soon reformed, in this matter.  Not entirely; for, to the last, he would cram into the satchel sacred to literature any odds and ends of rubbish that he couldn’t find a handy place for elsewhere.  When threatened with death for this, it did not trouble him; he only looked pleasant, saluted with soldierly grace, said “Wair good,” and did it again next day.

He was always busy; kept the rooms tidied up, the boots polished, the clothes brushed, the wash-basin full of clean water, my dress clothes laid out and ready for the lecture-hall an hour ahead of time; and he dressed me from head to heel in spite of my determination to do it myself, according to my lifelong custom.

He was a born boss, and loved to command, and to jaw and dispute with inferiors and harry them and bullyrag them.  He was fine at the railway station—­yes, he was at his finest there.  He would shoulder and plunge and paw his violent way through the packed multitude of natives with nineteen coolies at his tail, each bearing a trifle of luggage—­one a trunk, another a parasol, another a shawl, another a fan, and so on; one article to each, and the longer the procession, the better he was suited —­and he was sure to make for some engaged sleeper and begin to hurl the owner’s things out of it, swearing that it was ours and that there had been a mistake.  Arrived at our own sleeper, he would undo the bedding-bundles and make the beds and put everything to rights and shipshape in two minutes; then put his head out at, a window and have a restful good time abusing his gang of coolies and disputing their bill until we arrived and made him pay them and stop his noise.

Speaking of noise, he certainly was the noisest little devil in India —­and that is saying much, very much, indeed.  I loved him for his noise, but the family detested him for it.  They could not abide it; they could not get reconciled to it.  It humiliated them.  As a rule, when we got within six hundred yards of one of those big railway stations, a mighty racket of screaming and shrieking and shouting and storming would break upon us, and I would be happy to myself, and the family would say, with shame: