This is how we clothe ourselves in our Indian empire. Our smooth and comfortable _khakee_ suits, our ample _pyjamas_, the cool white jackets in which we dine, in this way are they brought about. But you must not allow yourself to think of the _Dirzee_ simply as an agency for producing clothes. Life is not made up of such simplicities. The _raison d’être_ of that mango tree lies without doubt in the chalice of nectar, called “mango fool,” with which Domingo appeases me when he guesses that his enormities have gone beyond the limits even of my endurance; but I see that thirty-seven candidates for the place of the _chupprassee_ who went on leave yesterday have encamped under its shade, that they may watch for my face in the verandah. The trespassing goat also has browsed on its leaves, and from the shelter of its branches the Magpie Robin pours that stream of song which, just before the dawning of the day, in the cloudy border land between sleeping and waking flows over my soul. But I shall never really know the place that tree has filled in my life, unless someone cuts it down and gives me a full view, from my easy chair, of the dirty brick-burners’ hut, with the poisonous film of blue smoke playing over the kiln, and the family of pariah puppies below, sporting with the sun-dried remains of a fowl, which deceased in my yard and was purloined by their gaunt mother. Now let imagination blot out the _Dirzee_. Remove him from the verandah. Take up his carpet and sweep away the litter. What a strange void there is in the place! Eliminate him from a lady’s day. Let nine o’clock strike, but bring no stealthy footstep to the door, no muffled voice making respectful application for his _Kam_. From nine to ten breakfast will fill the breach, and you may allow another hour for the butler’s account and the godown; but there is still a yawning chasm of at least two hours between eleven and tiffin. I cannot bridge it. Imagination strikes work. The joyful sound of the Borah’s voice brings promise of relief; but no! for what interest can there be in the Borah if you have no _Dirzee_? In the spirit of fair play, however, I must mention that my wife does not endorse all this. On the contrary, she tells me (she has a terse way of speaking) that it is “rank bosh.” She declares that the _Dirzee_ is the bane of her life, that he is worse than a fly, that she cannot sit down to the piano for five minutes but he comes buzzing round for black thread, or white thread, or mother-o-pearl buttons, or hooks and eyes, that every evening for the last month he has watched her getting ready for to drive, and just as her foot was on the carriage step, has reminded her, with a cough, that his work was finished and he had nothing to do. If she could only do without him, she would send him about his business and be the happiest woman in the world, for she could devote the whole day to music and painting and the improvement of her mind. Of course I assent. That