So the people who want to go along
the street, and the boys and girls who want to play in it, are all driven
to the middle of the way.
Here and there your rickshaw dodges, working its way through the crowd.
Now the man pauses a second lest he should run full-tilt over a group
of gaily-dressed little girls, each with a baby on her back, playing
at ball in the road. Half a dozen others are busy with battledores and
shuttlecocks, and the gaily-painted toys drop into your carriage, and
you are expected to toss them out again to the mites, who will bow very
deeply and with the profoundest gravity in return for your politeness; then
something flutters over your head, and you see that two boys and an old man
are sitting on the roof of a house about as high as a tool-shed, trying to
get their kites up. And you say to yourself that it is lucky that there
are no horses, for the quietest beast that ever lifted a hoof would bolt
here and charge through the whirl and uproar and the rain of dropping
shuttlecocks and bouncing balls.
Another fine thing about rickshaw-riding is that no one can call it
expensive. While the boy goes, you pay him about sevenpence an hour; while
he waits you pay him rather less than twopence-halfpenny an hour, and you
can have his services for a whole day for about half a crown. But some of
them will try to cheat you in places where foreigners are often met with,
and will put a whole twopence an hour on the regular price.
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