smokes with stoic calm, his fingers closing over the
bowl with the gentle solicitous grip of the smoker.
Experience of many things is written large upon the
faces of this couple; shrewd humour, the indefinable
air of worldly wisdom ; and over all there is a layer
of recent respectability, in keeping with their new
character as the companions of a saintly man.
Soon after they pass there comes, with a great
creaking and droning of wheels through the chambered
forest, a long line
of carts, bearing
ba ck from the
scene of piety the
members of the
S a c r e d Or d e r .
They recline, like
true priests, on the
soft hay spread for
them within; they
FILLING TH E WATERPOTS
look about them
with the innocent curiosity of their: race and character.
Here and there amongst them is one with the gentle
face of an ascetic, of a philosopher trained in the sadness
of life and deeply convinced of its illusion. One such
lies back, an old man, weary with the wayfaring, his
life’s history easy to read upon his saintly face.
Across the road, Burmese policemen, shorn of all
the picturesqueness of their race, amble about in khaki
garments, and forage caps set with an imitation of
jauntiness on their shaven heads. The British effort to