Wednesday 5 December 2012

Safety in numbers, what?



      “Careful o’ that one, sir. She’d a Haymarket Hussar,* and quite desperate altogether.” From which I gathered he, too, had taken the lady’s fancy, and avoided her for his own good.
      “Haymarket or Grant Road?” says I, and he said ’twas no joke, Theodore being a real mad miser with his women. “A fellow on sentry-go at the hareem cadged a cup of tej from one of the concubines, and was lashed to a pulp. Best to keep together when the likes of Madam Tamagno’s on the prowl; safety in numbers, what?”
      Unless she likes to drill by platoons,” says I, and he exclaimed “I say!” . . .


*Haymarket Hussar: a courtesan of the better class. Grant Road was the prostitutes’ quarter in Bombay


Flashman on the March, p.217, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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