[Picture: Ready-made-clothes Wallah] What shall I say of the _Roteewallah_ and the _Jooteewallah_, who comes round so regularly to keep your boots and shoes in disrepair, and of all the vociferous tribe of _borahs_? There is the _Kupprawallah_, and the _Boxwallah_, and the _Ready-made-clotheswallah_ (“readee made cloes mem sa-ab! dressin’ gown, badee, petticoat, drars, chamees, everyting, mem sa-ab, very che-eap!”) and the _Chowchowwallah_ and the _Maiwawallah_ or fruit man, with his pleasant basket of pomeloes and oranges, plantains, red and white, custard apples, guavas, figs, grapes, and pineapples, and those suspicious-looking old iron scales, hanging by greasy, knotted strings. Each of these good people, it seems, lives in this hard world for no other end but to supply my wants. One of them is positive that he supplied my father with the necessaries of life before I was born. [Picture: Sindworkwallah] He is by appearance about eighteen years of age, but this presents no difficulty, for if it was not he who ministered to my parent, it was his father, and so he has not only a personal, but a hereditary claim on me. He is a _workboxwallah_, and is yearning to show his regard for me by presenting me with a lady’s sandalwood dressing-case in return for the trifling sum of thirty-five rupees. The _sindworkwallah_, who has a similar esteem for me, scorns the thought of wishing to sell, but if I would just look at some of his beautiful things, he could go away happy. When they are all spread upon the ground, then it occurs to him that I have it in my power to make him lucky for the day by buying a fancy smoking-cap, which, by-the-by, he brought expressly for me. But this subject always makes me sad, for there is no disguising the fact that the _borah_ is fast passing away for ever, and with him all the glowing morning tints of that life which we used to live when India was still India. But let that regret pass. One _wallah_ remains, who presents himself at your door, not monthly, or weekly, but every day, and often twice a day, and not at the back verandah, but at the front, walking confidently up to the very easy-chair on which we stretch our lordly limbs. And I may safely say that, of all who claim directly or indirectly to have eaten our salt, there is not a man for whom we have, one and all of us, a kindlier feeling. You may argue that he is only a public servant, and has really far less claim on us than any of the others; never mind— “I pray thee, peace. I will be flesh and blood.” [Picture: Coolie] The English mail is in, and we feel, and will feel, towards that red-livened man as Noah felt towards the dove with the olive branch in her mouth. And when Christmas comes round, howsoever we may harden ourselves against others, scarcely one of us, I know, will grudge a rupee to the _tapalwallah_. [Picture: Finis]