Indra felt extremely ashamed. 'I'd better close the door,' he said. 'But then he may be hiding just behind it.'
'If he is,' I said, 'he is sure to come out and bite Shahji.'
Indra looked helplessly this way and that; then he said, 'It will serve him right! He keeps wild snakes in his house and he hasn't got the sense to take any precautions, ganja-smoking idiot that he is. Hullo, here is Didi. Don't come nearer, Didi, please don't. Stay where you are.'
Turning my head I saw Indra's Didi. There is an expression, 'fire under the cover of ashes': that was my first thought as I saw her. She looked like some one who had just risen from her seat of penance after having been engaged in age-long austerities. Under her left arm was a bundle of dry twigs and in her right hand was a basket, shaped like a flower-basket, with some vegetable in it. Her dress was like that of an up-country Musalman, dyed orange-brown, but not dirty like Shahji's. She wore a set of bangles made of lac and between the partings of her dark hair was a vermilion mark, the sign of a married Hindu woman. 'What is it?' she asked, putting down her bundle of twigs as she began to unloose the latch of the gate. 'Don't open it, I entreat you.' said Indra, greatly agitated. 'A big snake has got into the room.'
Didi looked at me; she seemed to be thinking something over. Then, with a smile, she said, in clear Bengali, 'Oh, is that it? A snake entering a snake-charmer's house—isn't that a wonder, Srikanta?'
51
