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heard from halted, shuttered carts the high squeals and giggles of
women whose faces should not be seen in public.

Nowadays, well-educated natives are of opinion that when their
womenfolk travel - and they visit a good deal - it is better to
take them quickly by rail in a properly screened compartment; and
that custom is spreading. But there are always those of the old
rock who hold by the use of their forefathers; and, above all,
there are always the old women - more conservative than the men -
who toward the end of their days go on a pilgrimage. They, being
withered and undesirable, do not, under certain circumstances,
object to unveiling. After their long seclusion, during which they
have always been in business touch with a thousand outside
interests, they love the bustle and stir of the open road, the
gatherings at the shrines, and the infinite possibilities of gossip
with like-minded dowagers. Very often it suits a longsuffering
family that a strong-tongued, iron-willed old lady should disport
herself about India in this fashion; for certainly pilgrimage is
grateful to the Gods. So all about India, in the most remote
places, as in the most public, you find some knot of grizzled
servitors in nominal charge of an old lady who is more or less
curtained and hid away in a bullock-cart. Such men are staid and
discreet, and when a European or a high-caste native is near will
net their charge with most elaborate precautions; but in the
ordinary haphazard chances of pilgrimage the precautions are not
taken. The old lady is, after all, intensely human, and lives to
look upon life.

Kim marked down a gaily ornamented ruth or family bullock-cart,
with a broidered canopy of two domes, like a double-humped camel,
which had just been drawn into the par. Eight men made its retinue,
and two of the eight were armed with rusty sabres - sure signs that
they followed a person of distinction, for the common folk do not
bear arms. An increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests,
and what to a European would have been bad language, came from
behind the curtains. Here was evidently a woman used to command.

Kim looked over the retinue critically. Half of them were thin-
legged, grey-bearded Ooryas from down country. The other half were
duffle-clad, felt-hatted hillmen of the North; and that mixture
told its own tale, even if he had not overheard the incessant
sparring between the two divisions. The old lady was going south on
a visit - probably to a rich relative, most probably to a son-in-
law, who had sent up an escort as a mark of respect. The hillmen
would be of her own people - Kulu or Kangra folk. It was quite
clear that she was not taking her daughter down to be wedded, or
the curtains would have been laced home and the guard would have
allowed no one near the car. A merry and a high-spirited dame,
thought Kim, balancing the dung-cake in one hand, the cooked food
in the other, and piloting the lama with a nudging shoulder.

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