manages to give each of them a box on the ears before it is out of reach. The father, meanwhile, sits gravely with his back to all these domestic matters, waiting for breakfast.
Presently the mats before the hut-doors are pushed down, and women with brass vessels in their hands come out; and, while they scour the pots and pans with dust, exchange between yawns the compliments of the morning.
The monkeys by this time have come closer to the preparations for food, and sit solemnly, household by household, watching every movement. Hindoos do not hurry themselves in anything they do, but the monkey has lots of time to spare and plenty of patience, and in the end, after the crow has stolen a little, and the dog has had its morsel, and the children are all satisfied, the poor fragments of the meal are thrown out on the ground for the bhunder-logue, the monkey-people; and it is soon discussed — the mother feeding the baby before she eats herself. When every house has thus, in turn, been visited, and no chance of further “out-door relief” remains, the monkeys go off to the well. The women are all here again, drawing the water for the day, and the monkeys sit and wait, the old ones in the front, sententious and serious, and the youngsters rolling about in the dust behind them, till at last some girl sees the creatures waiting, and “in the name of Ram” spills a lotah full of water in a hollow of the ground, and the monkeys come round it in a circle and stoop down and drink, with their tails all curled up over their backs like notes of interrogation. There is no contention or jostling. A forward child gets a box on the ear, perhaps, but each one, as it has satisfied its
