a fresh box and dispose of it in the markets. As for soda-water and allied
beverages, he gets his supply from the cheapest manufacturers; while his
ice-cream contains probably more water than milk and is flavoured, not with
vanilla, pine-apple or orange, but with some article which he declares is a
complete antidote against internal discomfort. He prepares his tea _a la
Russe_ in a brightly-polished samovar which compares favourably with his
tea-cups and country-made tin spoons. He charges his customer from two to
four pice for this delightful mixture which has a flavour of hot-water and
iron-rust rather than of tea.

Here too comes the itinerant fruit-seller, very often a woman, who hawks
fruit of all kinds from the superior mango to the acid "karaunda" of the
Ghats. For the sale of country-mangoes a place of vantage is required; so
she takes up a strong position on the roadside or on the doorstep of a
house and sets to work to pick out her best fruit and place it on the top
of her basket. She is generally a Deccani, either Musulman or Hindu,
varying in age from 20 to 40 and is fully capable of conciliating the Lord
of the Bombay pavements, when he somewhat roughly commands her to move on.
"Jemadar Saheb" she calls him; and if this flattery is insufficient she
offers one of her ripest mangoes with a glance that he cannot resist. It is
too much for the sepoy: he smiles and tramps off, and she holds her
position undisturbed. If she be a Hindu, you will probably notice
the bright-red mark on her forehead, joining brow to brow, or, in
the words of a Persian poet, uniting two Parthian or Tartar bows
into Kama's Long-bow. The male mango-hawker is a Deccan Hindu or
Musulman gardener who purchases a stock of showy inferior fruit from the
wholesale dealers. After the mango season is over he becomes a vendor of
Poona figs or Nagpur oranges. He is often a small, dark, muscular man who
began life as a day-labourer in the highly-cultivated fields of the Deccan
and has journeyed to the city with his modest savings tightly tied up in