"Makes for fiddlesticks!" muttered the senior under his breath, adding aloud, "Who the dickens is the _shâhbâsh wallah_ when he is at home, and what's his work?" He asked the question almost reluctantly, for his junior's extremely varied information had, since the morning, imparted a vague uncertainty to a round world which had hitherto, in Dr. Pringle's estimation of it, been absolutely sure--cocksure!
"What is he? Oh! he's a variety of names. He's objective reality, moral sanction, antecedent experience, unconditioned good. Ye can take yer choice of the lot, sir; and if ye can't win the thrick with metaphysics--I can't, and that's the thruth--play thrumps. Sentiment!--sympathy! Ye can't go wrong there. Ye can't leave them out of life's equation, East or West. Just some one--a fool, maybe--to say ye're a fine fellow, an' no misthake, at the very moment whin ye know ye're not. Biogenesis, sir, is the Law of Life. As Schopenhauer says, the secret that two is wan, is the--"
His senior gave an exasperated sigh, and preferred changing the subject. So at the appointed time, no sooner, no later, the last patter of pink tears fell from the brushes upon the floor of the _post-mortem_ and upon the still figure, which might have been a corpse save for its drowsy applause--"Bravo, boys, bravo!" Then the caterpillar ladders, with the decorators and the pots of colour-wash and the brushes still attached to them, crawled away, and the _shâhbâsh wallah_ followed in their wake, his skin bearing mute evidence to the amount of work he had provoked.
His turban and waistcloth testified to it for days--in lessening variety of tint as the layers of pink, green, blue, and yellow splashes wore off--for at least a fortnight, during which time Surgeon-Major Pringle, busy in making all things conform to his ideal, constantly came across the _shâhbâsh wallah_ bestowing praise where, in the doctor's opinion, none was deserved. What right, for instance, had the water-carriers filling their pots, the sweepers removing the refuse, to senseless commendation for the performance of their daily round, their common task?
Especially when it was so ill performed; even in the matter of punkah-pulling, a subject on which the native might be credited with some knowledge. Surgeon-Major Pringle seethed with repressed resentment for days over the intermittent pulse of the office punkah, and finally, in a white heat of discomfort and indignation, burst out into the verandah, harangued the coolie at length, and in the fulness of Western energy went so far as to show him how to keep up a regular, even swing. His masterly grasp of a till then untouched occupation not only satisfied himself but also the _shâhbâsh wallah_, who, as usual, was lounging about in the verandah doing nothing. So, of course, his "_Shâhbâsh, jee, shâhbâsh_," preceded Surgeon-Major Pringle's hasty return to the office and prepared Terence O'Brien for the dictum that the offender must be sent about his business; for _if_ he was a camp-follower he _must_ have some business, some regular work.