Mundy, Talbot, 1879-1940 / 2008-06-18 00:00:00

EBOOK, RUNG HO! ***


This eBook was transcribed by M.R.J.

RUNG HO!
A Novel by Talbot Mundy

RUNG HO!
CHAPTER I
Howrah City bows the knee
More or less to masters three,
King, and Prince, and Siva.
Howrah City pays in pain
Taxes which the royal twain
Give to priests, to give again
(More or less) to Siva.
THAT was no time or place for any girl of twenty to be wandering
unprotected. Rosemary McClean knew it; the old woman, of the sweeper
caste, that is no caste at all,--the hag with the flat breasts and
wrinkled skin, who followed her dogwise, and was no more protection
than a toothless dog,--knew it well, and growled about it in
incessant undertones that met with neither comment nor response.
"Leave a pearl of price to glisten on the street, yes!" she grumbled.
"Perhaps none might notice it--perhaps! But her--here--at this
time--" She would continue in a rumbling growl of half-prophetic
catalogues of evil--some that she had seen to happen, some that she
imagined, and not any part of which was in the least improbable.
As the girl passed through the stenching, many-hued bazaar, the roar
would cease for a second and then rise again. Turbaned and pugreed--
Mohammedan and Hindoo--men of all grades of color, language, and
belief, but with only one theory on women, would stare first at the
pony that she rode, then at her, and then at the ancient grandmother
who trotted in her wake.
Read more


Parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19