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THE SPOILT CHILD.
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were victims of assaults: some were thieves, who sat apart dejected and sad: some, conspicuous by their turbans, were engaged in writing out petitions in English. Some were complainants in the different cases, who tramped noisily about the court; others, who were to be witnesses, were busily whispering to each other: the men who make it their business to provide bail were sitting about as thick as crows at a ghât. Here were pleaders' touts, using all their arts to get clients for their masters: there were pleaders engaged in coaching their witnesses: and here the amlahs were writing out cases that had been sent up by the Police. The sergeants of police looked very important as they marched up and down with proud and pompous port. The chief clerks were discussing different English magistrates: this one was declared to be a great fool, that one a very cunning man, a third too mild and easily imposed upon, a fourth too harsh and rough; they pronounced also an unfavourable criticism on the orders passed the previous day in a particular case. The police court was so crowded, indeed, that it seemed the very Hall of Yama, and all looked forward with fear and trembling to their fate.
Baburam Babu came bustling up to the court, accompanied by his pleader, his counsellor Thakchacha, and some of his relatives. Thakchacha was wearing a conical cap, fine muslin clothes, and the peculiar turned-up shoes of his class. His crystal beads in hand, he was invoking the names of his special guardian genius and his Prophet, and muttering his prayers with repeated shakings of the head; but this was all mere ostentation. A man so full of tricks as Thakchacha is not met with every day. At the police court he spun about hither and thither, for all the world like a peg-top. At one moment he was coaching his witnesses in a whisper; the next, walking about hand in
