made with hands in which he stood, even though dead kings had built it. Yes! the whole figure did not belong somehow to its environment; to the litter of wasted forage, the ashes of dead fires, to the desertion and neglect of a place which, having served its purpose of a night's lodging, has been left behind on the road. It seemed worth more than that.
"I gave you a nice toss, didn't I?" said Elflida Norma, breaking in on his quasi-sentimental thought with a certain complacency. "If you had got out of my way it would have been more better."
"You mean if you hadn't got in mine," he replied, grimly. "But don't let us quarrel about that now. The mischief's done so far as I am concerned."
The blue eyes narrowed in eager interest.
"Have you broken things inside, too?" she asked, sympathy absent, pure curiosity present in her tone.
"No! I didn't," he said, shortly. "I'm not of the kind that breaks easily."
She considered him calmly from head to foot. "No-o-o," she admitted, sparingly. "I suppose not--but your arms look veree brittle, like china--I suppose that is from being so--being so chicken-white."
"Perhaps," he said, still more shortly, and was relieved when Imân (having from the cook-room, where he was feverishly feathering fowls in preparation for the night's feast, detected Elflida's flagrant breach of etiquette in having anything whatever to do with a coatless sahib) hurried across to beguile his charge back to the paths of propriety by reporting that Lily-baba (to whom the girl was devoted) evinced a determination to eat melons with her brothers, which he, Imân, was far too busy to frustrate.
"You need not make such pother about big dinner to-night," she said, viciously, when, with the absolutely accommodating Lily in her arms, she stood watching the far less interesting process of pounding forcemeat on a curry stone; "for I heard him tell the smith that he would go this evening if--well, if somebody kept his temper in boiling oil. Such a queer idea--as if anybody could!"
Old Imân's hands fell for an instant from the munâdu (Maintenon) cutlets he was preparing, for he understood the frail foundation on which his chance of manufacturing a husband stood. Jullunder-sahib must be making a spring, and if the oil in which it had to be boiled---- But no! As cook, he knew something of the properties of hot fat, and felt convinced that the spring would never be fried in time.
So all that long hot day he toiled and slaved in company with an anatomy of a man whom he had unearthed from the city. A man who had also in his youth served the white blood, but had never risen beyond the scullery. A man who called him "Great Artificer," and fanned him and the charcoal fire indiscriminately according to their needs.
And all that long hot day on the other side of the arcaded square work went on also, so that the clang of metal on anvil or cook-room fire rose in antagonism on the dusty sunshine which slept between them. Dinner or no dinner? Spring or no spring? And the circling dark shadows of the kites above in the blue sky were almost the only other signs of life, for Elflida Norma had found sleep the easiest way of keeping Lily-baba from the melons, and the boys slept as they slept always.
But as the sun set Imân knew that fate had decided in favour of the dinner, for Jullunder-sahib came over from the smithy with empty hands, and found hot water in his room, and the change of white raiment he carried in his knapsack laid out decorously on the bed.
He took the hint and dressed for dinner, even to the buttonhole of jasmine which he found beside his hair-brush.
Elflida Norma, under similar supervision, dressed also. In fact, everything was dressed, including the flat tin lids of the saucepans which Imân had impressed into doing duty as side-dishes. Surrounded by castellated walls of rice paste, supporting cannon balls of alternate spinach and cochinealed potatoes, they really looked very fine. So did Imân himself, starched to inconceivable stiffness of deportment. So even did the anatomy, who, promoted for once to the dining-room, grinned at the young man and the girl, at the Great Artificer and all his works, with his usual indiscrimination.
And, in truth, each and all deserved grins. Yet Elflida Norma looked at Alec Alexander, he at her, and both at the dinner table set out marvellously with great trails of the common pumpkin vine looped with the cheap silver tinsel every Indian bazaar provides, and felt a sudden shyness of themselves, of each other, and the unwonted snowiness and glitter.
"Cler or wite?" said Imân, his old hands in difficulties with two soup plates. There was a dead silence.
"He means soup," faltered Elflida Norma desperately, wishing herself with the boys who were being regaled with curry and rice in her room, and thereinafter became dumb until the next course, when a sense of duty made her supplement Imân's "fish-bar'l" with the explanation that it was not really fish, which was not procurable, but another form of fowl.
So, in fact, were the side dishes which followed, and in which Imân had so far surpassed his usual self that Elflida was perforce as helpless as her companion for all save eating them solidly in due order. The old man, however, was too much absorbed in the due handling of "bredsarse" with the fowl, which was at last allowed to appear under the title of "roschikken," too much discomforted by the subsidence of his favourite "sikken," a cheese soufflée, to notice silence, or the lack of it, until, just as--the worst strain over--he was perfunctorily apologising for the impossibility of "Hice-puddeen," a fateful cry came from the next room and Elflida started to her feet.
"It's Lily," she began; but Imân frowned her into her seat again, and turned to the anatomy superbly. "Go!" he said with dignity, "and bid the ayah see to Lily-baba."
The result, however, was unsatisfactory, and a certain obstinacy grew to Elflida's small face, which finally blossomed into open rebellion and a burst of confidence.
"You see," she said, those blue eyes of hers almost blinking as she narrowed them with earnestness, "she smells guavas, and they are more her hobby than melons even."
The young man smiled.
"Who's Lily?" he asked; "your sister, I suppose."
"My half-sister," she replied, solemnly. "But she will cry on, you see, if she is not let to come to my place."
"Then let her come--why not?"
"It is an evil custom," began Imân, as the order was given. He knew no graver blame than that even for a whole Decalogue in ruins; but Elflida Norma stamped her foot as she had stamped it in the polka, so he had to give in and thus avoid worse exposures.
And, after all, the introduction of the dimpled brown child in a little white night-shift, who leant shyly against Elflida's blue beads, seemed to help the conversation. So much so that after coffee and cigarettes had been served in the verandah, old Imân felt as if success must crown his efforts--if only there were time! But how could there be time when the possible husband had arranged, since the motor bicycle refused to be mended with the appliances at his disposal, to have it conveyed by country cart overnight to the nearest railway station, five miles off, whither he must tramp it, he supposed? next morning, to catch the mail train.
It was when, pleasantly, yet still carelessly, Alec Alexander was saying good-bye to the blue eyes and the blue beads, with the brown baby cuddled up comfortably in the girl's slender arms, that Imân, with a sinking heart, played his last card by saying that there was no need for the Huzoor to tramp. The Miss-Sahiba and Lily-baba invariably took a carriage airing before breakfast, and could quite easily drop the Huzoor at the railway station.
"Yes! I could drop you quite easily at that
