He knew that the ayah's husband sold the Colonel's soda-water,
paraffin, matches, candles, tobacco, cheroots, fruit, sugar, etc., at
a little portable shop round the corner of the road, and of the terms
on which the _hamal_ and the butler supplied these commodities to the
ayah for transfer to her good man.

He knew too much of the philosophy, manners, habits, and morals of the
dog-boy, of concealed cases of the most infectious diseases in the
compound, of the sub-letting and over-crowding of the servants'
quarters, of incredible quarrels, intrigues, jealousies, revenges,
base villainies and wrongs, superstitions and beliefs.

He would hear the hatching of a plot--an hour's arrangement and
wrangle--whereby, through far-sighted activity, perjury, malpractice
and infinite ingenuity, the ringleader would gain a _pice_ and the
follower a _pie_ (a farthing and a third of a farthing respectively).

Daily he saw the butler steal milk, sugar, and tea, for his own use;
the _hamal_ steal oil when he filled the lamps, for sale; the _malli_
steal flowers, for sale; the coachman steal carriage-candles; the cook
steal a moiety of everything that passed through his hands--every one
in that black underworld stealing, lying, back-biting, cheating,
intriguing (and all meanwhile strictly and stoutly religious, even
the sweeper-descended Goanese cook, the biggest thief of all, purging
his Christian soul on Sunday mornings by Confession, and fortifying
himself against the temptations of the Evil One at early Mass).

Between these _nowker log_, the servant-people, and his own _jat_ or
class, the _Sahib-log_, the master-people, were the troopers, splendid