Ch. 12: Georgie Porgie - Page 2

of dacoits. Sometimes he turned out and dressed
down dacoits on his own account; for the country was still smouldering
and would blaze when least expected. He enjoyed these charivaris, but
the dacoits were not so amused. All the officials who came in contact
with him departed with the idea that Georgie Porgie was a valuable
person, well able to take care of himself, and, on that belief, he was
left to his own devices.

At the end of a few months he wearied of his solitude, and cast about
for company and refinement. The Queen's Law had hardly begun to be felt
in the country, and Public Opinion, which is more powerful than the
Queen's Law, had yet to come. Also, there was a custom in the country
which allowed a white man to take to himself a wife of the Daughters of
Heth upon due payment. The marriage was not quite so binding as is the
nikkah ceremony among Mahomedans, but the wife was very pleasant.

When all our troops are back from Burma there will be a proverb in their
mouths, 'As thrifty as a Burmese wife,' and pretty English ladies will
wonder what in the world it means.

The headman of the village next to Georgie Porgie's post had a fair
daughter who had seen Georgie Porgie and loved him from afar. When news
went abroad that the Englishman with the heavy hand who lived in the
stockade was looking for a housekeeper, the headman came in and
explained that, for five hundred rupees down, he would entrust his
daughter to Georgie Porgie's keeping, to be maintained in all honour,
respect, and comfort, with pretty dresses, according to the custom of
the country. This thing was done, and Georgie Porgie never repented it.

He found his rough-and-tumble house put straight and made comfortable,
his hitherto unchecked expenses cut down by one half, and himself petted
and made much of by his new acquisition, who sat at the head of his
table and sang songs to him and ordered his Madrassee servants about,
and was in every way as sweet and merry and honest and winning a little
woman as the most exacting of bachelors could have desired. No race, men
say who know, produces such good wives and heads of households as the
Burmese. When the next detachment tramped by on the war-path the
Subaltern in Command found at Georgie Porgie's table a hostess to be
deferential to, a woman to be treated in every way as one occupying an
assured position. When he gathered his men together next dawn and
replunged into the jungle he thought regretfully of the nice little
dinner and the pretty face, and envied Georgie Porgie from the bottom of
his heart. Yet HE was engaged to a girl at Home, and that is how some
men are constructed.

The Burmese girl's name was not a pretty one; but as she was promptly
christened