occasional coup is by no means feigned, and is perhaps natural to people
whose daily lives are fraught with little joy. Round the corner lies
a third room or club, likewise filled with starved and sleepy humanity.
Near the door squats a figure without arms, who can scratch his head
with his toes without altering his position, "What do you do for a living,
Baba?" you ask; "I beg, saheb. I beg from sunrise until noon, wandering
about the streets and past the "pedhis" of the rich merchants, and with
luck I obtain six or eight annas. That gives me the one meal I need,
for I am a small man; and the balance I spend in the club, where
I may smoke and lie at peace. No, I am not a Maratha; I am a Panchkalshi;
but I reck nothing of caste now. That belongs to the past."

A light chuckle behind you, as the last words are spoken, brings you sharp
round on your heels; and you discern huddled in the semi-darkness of the
corner what appears in the miserable light of the cocoanut oil lamp to be a
Goanese boy. There are the short gray knickers and the thin white shirt
affected by the Native Christian boy; there is the short black hair; but
the skin is white, unusually white for a native of Goa, and there is
something curious about the face which prompts you to ask the owner who he
is and whence he comes. The only reply is a vacant but not unpleasant
smile; and the armless wastrel then volunteers the information that the
child--for she is little more--is not a boy but a girl. Merciful Heaven!
How comes she here amid this refuse of humanity? "She is an orphan," says
the armless one, "and she is half-mad. Her parents died when she was very
young, and her mind became somehow weak. There was none to take charge of
her; so we of the opium-club brought her here, and in return for our
support she runs errands for us and prepares the room for the nightly
conclave. She is a Mahomedan." You look again at the dark-eyed child
smiling in the corner and you wonder what horror, what ill-treatment
or what grief brought her to this pass. Peradventure it is a mercy