"Mon alive!" he gasped. "I feel just for all the wor-rld like a captive balloon, or a puffy-dunter--that's a puffing whale, ye ken. I'll veesit yon onion-hoose nae mair i' ma life!" And I think it cost us something like half a sovereign in old brandy to neutralise the effects of that vegetarian banquet. CHAPTER XII CURRIES "Thou com'st in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee." Different modes of manufacture--The "native" fraud--"That man's family"--The French _kari_--A Parsee curry--"The oyster in the sauce"--Ingredients--Malay curry--Locusts--When to serve--What to curry--Prawn curry--Dry curry, a champion recipe--Rice--The Bombay duck. The poor Indian grinds his coriander seeds, green ginger, and other ingredients between two large flat stones; taking a whiff at the family "hubble-bubble" pipe at intervals. The frugal British housewife purchases (alleged) curry powder in the warehouse of Italy--where it may have lived on, like Claudian, "through the centuries"--stirs a spoonful or two into the hashed mutton, surrounds it with a wall of clammy rice, and calls it BENARES CURRY, made from the recipe of a very dear uncle who met his death while tiger-shooting. And you will be in the minority if you do not cut this savoury meat with a knife, and eat potatoes, and very often cabbage, with it. The far-seeing eating-house keeper corrals a _Lascar_ or a discharged _Mehtar_ into the firm, gives him his board, a pound a month, and a clean _puggaree_ and _Kummerbund_ daily, and "stars" him in the bill as an "Indian _chef_, fresh from the Chowringhee Club, Calcutta." And it is part of the duties of this Oriental--supposed by the unwary to be at least a prince in his native land--to hand the portions of curry, which he may or may not have concocted, to the appreciative guests, who enjoy the repast all the more from having the scent of the Hooghly brought across the footlights. I was once sadly and solemnly reproved by the head waiter of a very "swagger" establishment indeed for sending away, after one little taste, the (alleged) curry which had been handed me by an exile from Ind, in snow-white raiment. "You really ought to have eaten that, sir," said the waiter, "for that man's family have been celebrated curry-makers for generations." I smole a broad smile. In the Land of the Moguls the very babies who roll in the dust know the secret of curry-making. But that "that man" had had any hand in the horrible concoction placed before me I still resolutely decline to believe. And how can a man be cook and waiter at the same time? The "native curry-maker," depend on it, is more or less of a fraud; and his aid is only invoked as an excuse for overcharging.