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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Story of Sonny Sahib
+by Mrs. Everard Cotes
+(#2 in our series by Mrs. Everard Cotes)
+
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+Title: The Story of Sonny Sahib
+
+Author: Mrs. Everard Cotes
+
+Release Date: October, 2003  [Etext #4547]
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+[This file was first posted on February 7, 2002]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Story of Sonny Sahib
+by Mrs. Everard Cotes
+******This file should be named tssnn10.txt or tssnn10.zip******
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+This etext was created by Don Lainson (dlainson@sympatico.ca) & Charles Aldarondo (Aldarondo@yahoo.com)
+
+THE STORY OF SONNY SAHIB
+
+By MRS. EVERARD COTES
+
+(SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN)
+
+1894
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+
+
+'Ayah,' the doctor-sahib said in the vernacular, standing beside
+the bed, 'the fever of the mistress is like fire.  Without doubt
+it cannot go on thus, but all that is in your hand to do you have
+done.  It is necessary now only to be very watchful.  And it will
+be to dress the mistress, and to make everything ready for a
+journey.  Two hours later all the sahib-folk go from this place in
+boats, by the river, to Allahabad.  I will send an ox-cart to take
+the mistress and the baby and you to the bathing ghat.'
+
+'Jeldi karo!' he added, which meant 'Quickly do!'--a thing people
+say a great many times a day in India.
+
+The ayah looked at him stupidly.  She was terribly frightened; she
+had never been so frightened before.  Her eyes wandered from the
+doctor's face to the ruined south wall of the hut, where the sun of
+July, when it happens to shine on the plains of India, was beating
+fiercely upon the mud floor.  That ruin had happened only an hour
+ago, with a terrible noise just outside, such a near and terrible
+noise that she, Tooni, had scrambled under the bed the mistress was
+lying on, and had hidden there until the doctor-sahib came and
+pulled her forth by the foot, and called her a poor sort of person.
+Then Tooni had lain down at the doctor-sahib's feet, and tried to
+place one of them upon her head, and said that indeed she was not a
+worthless one, but that she was very old and she feared the guns;
+so many of the sahibs had died from the guns!  She, Tooni, did not
+wish to die from a gun, and would the Presence, in the great mercy
+of his heart, tell her whether there would be any more shooting?
+There would be no more shooting, the Presence had said; and then he
+had given her a bottle and directions, and the news about going
+down the river in a boat.  Tooni's mind did not even record the
+directions, but it managed to retain the words about going away in
+a boat, and as she stood twisting the bottle round and round in the
+folds of her ragged red petticoat it made a desperate effort to
+extract their meaning.
+
+'There will be no more shooting,' said the doctor again, 'and there
+is a man outside with a goat.  He will give you two pounds of milk
+for the baby for five rupees.'
+
+'Rupia!  I have not even one!' said the ayah, looking toward the
+bed; 'the captain-sahib has not come these thirty days as he
+promised.  The colonel-sahib has sent the food.  The memsahib is
+for three days without a pice.'
+
+'I'll pay,' said the doctor shortly, and turned hurriedly to go.
+Other huts were crying out for him; he could hear the voice of some
+of them through their mud partitions.  As he passed out he caught a
+glimpse of himself in a little square looking-glass that hung on a
+nail on the wall, and it made him start nervously and then smile
+grimly.  He saw the face of a man who had not slept three hours in
+as many days and nights--a haggard, unshaven face, drawn as much
+with the pain of others as with its own weariness.  His hair stood
+up in long tufts, his eyes had black circles under them.  He wore
+neither coat nor waistcoat, and his regimental trousers were tied
+round the waist by a bit of rope.  On the sleeve of his collarless
+shirt were three dark dry splashes; he noticed them as he raised
+his arm to put on his pith helmet.  The words did not reach his
+lips, but his heart cried out within him for a boy of the 32nd.
+
+The ayah caught up her brass cooking-pot and followed him.  Since
+the doctor-sahib was to pay, the doctor-sahib would arrange that
+good measure should be given in the matter of the milk.  And upon
+second thought the doctor-sahib decided that precautions were
+necessary.  He told the man with the goat, therefore, that when the
+ayah received two pounds of milk she would pay him the five rupees.
+As he put the money into Tooni's hand she stayed him gently.
+
+'We are to go without, beyond the walls, to the ghat?' she asked in
+her own tongue.
+
+'Yes,' said the doctor, 'in two hours.  I have spoken.'
+
+'Hazur![1] the Nana Sahib--'
+
+
+[1] 'Honoured one.'
+
+
+'The Nana Sahib has written it.  Bus!'[1] the doctor replied
+impatiently.  Put the memsahib into her clothes.  Pack everything
+there is, and hasten.  Do you understand, foolish one?'
+
+
+[1] 'Enough.'
+
+
+'Very good said the ayah submissively, and watched the doctor out
+of sight.  Then she insisted--holding the rupees, she could insist--
+that the goat-keeper should bring his goat into the hut to milk
+it; there was more safety, Tooni thought, in the hut.  While he
+milked it Tooni sat upon the ground, hugging her knees, and
+thought.
+
+The memsahib had said nothing all this time, had known nothing.
+For two days the memsahib had been, as Tooni would have said,
+without sense--had lain on the bed in the corner quietly staring at
+the wall, where the looking-glass hung, making no sign except when
+she heard the Nana Sahib's guns.  Then she sat up straight, and
+laughed very prettily and sweetly.  It was the salute, she thought
+in her fever; the Viceroy was coming; there would be all sorts of
+gay doings in the station.  When the shell exploded that tore up
+the wall of the hut, she asked Tooni for her new blue silk with the
+flounces, the one that had been just sent out from England, and her
+kid slippers with the rosettes.  Tooni, wiping away her helpless
+tears with the edge of her head covering, had said, 'Na, memsahib,
+na!' and stroked the hot hand that pointed, and then the mistress
+had forgotten again.  As to the little pink baby, three days old,
+it blinked and throve and slept as if it had been born in its
+father's house to luxury and rejoicing.
+
+Tooni questioned the goat-keeper; but he had seen three sahibs
+killed that morning, and was stupid with fear.  He did not even
+know of the Nana Sahib's order that the English were to be allowed
+to go away in boats; and this was remarkable, because he lived in
+the bazar outside, and in the bazar people generally know what is
+going to happen long before the sahibs who live in the tall white
+houses do.  Tooni had only her own reflections.
+
+There would be no more shooting, and the Nana Sahib would let them
+all go away in boats; that was good khaber--good news.  Tooni
+wondered, as she put the baby's clothes together in one bundle, and
+her own few possessions together in another, whether it was to be
+believed.  The Nana Sahib so hated the English; had not the guns
+spoken of his hate these twenty-one days?  Inside the walls many
+had died, but outside the walls might not all die?  The doctor had
+said that the Nana Sahib had written it; but why should the Nana
+Sahib write the truth?  The Great Lord Sahib, the Viceroy, had sent
+no soldiers to compel him.  Nevertheless, Tooni packed what there
+was to pack, and soothed the baby with a little goat's milk and
+water, and dressed her mistress as well as she was able, according
+to the doctor's directions.  Then she went out to where old Abdul,
+the table-waiter, her husband, crouched under a wall, and told him
+all that she knew and feared.  But Abdul, having heard no guns for
+nearly an hour and a half, was inclined to be very brave, and said
+that without doubt they should all get safely to Allahabad; and
+there, when the memsahib was better, they would find the captain-
+sahib again, and he would give them many rupees backsheesh for
+being faithful to her.
+
+'The memsahib will never be better,' said Tooni, sorrowfully; 'her
+rice is finished in the earth.  The memsahib will die.'
+
+She agreed to go to the ghat, though, and went back into the hut to
+wait for the ox-cart while Abdul cooked a meal on the powder-
+blackened ground with the last of the millet, and gave thanks to
+Allah.
+
+There was no room for Tooni to ride when they started.  She walked
+alongside carrying the baby and its little bundle of clothes.
+There was nothing else to carry, and that was fortunate, for the
+cart in which the memsahib lay was too full of sick and wounded to
+hold anything more.  In Tooni's pocket a little black book swung to
+and fro; it was the memsahib's book; and in the beginning of the
+firing, before the fever came, Tooni had seen the memsahib reading
+it long and often.  They had not been killed in consequence, Tooni
+thought; there must be a protecting charm in the little black book;
+so she slipped it into her pocket.  They left the looking-glass
+behind.
+
+The ox-cart passed out creaking, in its turn, beyond the earthworks
+of the English encampment into the city, where the mutinous natives
+stood in sullen curious groups to watch the train go by.  A hundred
+yards through the narrow streets, choked with the smell of
+gunpowder and populous with vultures, and Abdul heard a quick voice
+in his ear.  When he turned, none were speaking, but he recognised
+in the crowd the lowering indifferent face of a sepoy he knew--one
+of the Nana Sahib's servants.  Saying nothing, he fell back for
+Tooni and laid his hand upon her arm.  And when the cart creaked
+out of the town into the crowded, dusty road that led down to the
+ghat, neither Abdul nor Tooni were in the riotous crowd that
+pressed along with it.  They had taken refuge in the outer bazar,
+and Sonny Sahib, sound asleep and well hidden, had taken refuge
+with them.
+
+As to Sonny Sahib's mother, she was neither shot in the boats with
+the soldiers that believed the written word of the Nana Sahib, nor
+stabbed with the women and children who went back to the palace
+afterwards.  She died quietly in the oxcart before it reached the
+ghat, and the pity of it was that Sonny Sahib's father, the
+captain, himself in hospital four hundred miles from Cawnpore,
+never knew.
+
+There is a marble angel in Cawnpore now, standing in a very quiet
+garden, and shut off even from the trees and the flowers by an
+enclosing wall.  The angel looks always down, down, and such an
+awful, pitiful sorrow stands there with her that nobody cares to
+try to touch it with words.  People only come and look and go
+silently away, wondering what time can have for the healing of such
+a wound as this.  There is an inscription--
+
+
+SACRED TO THE PERPETUAL MEMORY OF A LARGE COMPANY OF CHRISTIAN
+PEOPLE, CHIEFLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN, WHO NEAR THIS SPOT WERE CRUELLY
+MURDERED BY THE FOLLOWERS OF THE REBEL NANA DHUNDU PANT OF BITHUR,
+AND CAST, THE DYING WITH THE DEAD, INTO THE WELL BELOW, ON THE XVTH
+DAY OF JULY MDCCCLVII.'
+
+
+And afterward Sonny Sahib's father believed that all he could learn
+while he lived about the fate of his wife and his little son was
+written there.  But he never knew.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+
+
+Tooni and Abdul heard the terrible news of Cawnpore six months
+later.  They had gone back to their own country, and it was far
+from Cawnpore--hundreds and hundreds of miles across a white sandy
+desert, grown with prickles and studded with rocks--high up in the
+north of Rajputana.  In the State of Chita and the town of
+Rubbulgurh there was no fighting, because there were no Sahibs.
+The English had not yet come to teach the Maharajah how to govern
+his estate and spend his revenues.  That is to say, there was no
+justice to speak of, and a great deal of cholera, and by no means
+three meals a day for everybody, or even two.  But nobody was
+discontented with troubles that came from the gods and the
+Maharajah, and talk of greased cartridges would not have been
+understood.  Thinking of this, Abdul often said to Tooni, his wife;
+'The service of the sahib is good and profitable, but in old age
+peace is better, even though we are compelled to pay many rupees to
+the tax-gatherers of the Maharajah.'  Tooni always agreed, and when
+the khaber came that all the memsahibs and the children had been
+killed by the sepoys, she agreed weeping.  They were always so kind
+and gentle, the memsahibs, and the little ones, the babalok--the
+babalok!  Surely the sepoys had become like the tiger-folk.  Then
+she picked up Sonny Sahib and held him tighter than he liked.  She
+had crooned with patient smiles over many of the babalok in her
+day, but from beginning to end, never a baba like this.  So strong
+he was, he could make old Abdul cry out, pulling at his beard, so
+sweet-tempered and healthy that he would sleep just where he was
+put down, like other babies of Rubbulgurh.  Tooni grieved deeply
+that she could not give him a bottle, and a coral, and a
+perambulator, and often wondered that he consented to thrive
+without these things, but the fact remains that he did.  He even
+allowed himself to be oiled all over occasionally for the good of
+his health, which was forbearing in a British baby.  And always
+when Abdul shook his finger at him and said--
+
+
+'Gorah pah howdah, hathi pah JEEN!
+Jeldi bag-gia, Warren HasTEEN!'[1]
+
+
+he laughed and crowed as if he quite understood the joke.
+
+
+[1] 'Howdahs on horses, on elephants JEEN!
+He ran away quickly did Warren HasTEEN!'
+
+'Jeen' means 'saddles,' but nobody could make that rhyme!  Popular
+incident of an English retreat in Hastings' time.
+
+
+Tooni had no children of her own, and wondered how long it would be
+before she and Abdul must go again to Cawnpore to find the baby's
+father.  There need be no hurry, Tooni thought, as Sonny Sahib
+played with the big silver hoops in her ears, and tried to kick
+himself over her shoulder.  Abdul calculated the number of rupees
+that would be a suitable reward for taking care of a baby for six
+months, found it considerable, and said they ought to start at
+once.  Then other news came--gathering terror from mouth to mouth
+as it crossed Rajputana--and Abdul told his wife one evening, after
+she had put Sonny Sahib to sleep with a hymn to Israfil, that a
+million of English soldiers had come upon Cawnpore, and in their
+hundredfold revenge had left neither Mussulman nor Hindoo alive in
+the city--also that the Great Lord Sahib had ordered the head of
+every kala admi, every black man, to be taken to build a bridge
+across the Ganges with, so that hereafter his people might leave
+Cawnpore by another way.  Then Abdul also became of the opinion
+that there need be no haste in going.
+
+Sonny Sahib grew out of the arms and necks of his long embroidered
+night dresses and day dresses almost immediately, and then there
+was a difficulty, which Tooni surmounted by cutting the waists off
+entirely and gathering the skirts round the baby's neck with a
+drawing string, making holes in the sides for his arms to come
+through.  Tooni bought him herself a little blue and gold Mussulman
+cap in the bazar.  The captain-sahib would be angry, but then the
+captain-sahib was very far away, killed perhaps, and Tooni thought
+the blue and gold cap wonderfully becoming to Sonny Sahib.  All day
+long he played and crept in this under the sacred peepul-tree in
+the middle of the village among brown-skinned babies who wore no
+clothes at all--only a string of beads round their fat little
+waists--and who sometimes sat down in silence and made a solemn
+effort to comprehend him.
+
+In quite a short time--in Rubbulgurh, where there is no winter, two
+years is a very little while--Sonny Sahib grew too big for even
+this adaptation of his garments; and then Tooni took him to Sheik
+Uddin, the village tailor, and gave Sheik Uddin long and careful
+directions about making clothes for him.  The old man listened to
+her for an hour, and waggled his beard, and said that he quite
+understood; it should be as she wished.  But Sheik Uddin had never
+seen any English people, and did not understand at all.  He
+accepted Tooni's theories, but he measured and cut according to his
+own.  Sheik Uddin could not afford to suffer in his reputation for
+the foolish notions of a woman.  So he made Sonny Sahib a pair of
+narrow striped calico trousers, and a long tight-fitting little
+coat with large bunches of pink roses on it, in what was the
+perfectly correct fashion for Mahomedan little boys of Rubbulgurh
+and Rajputana generally.  Tooni paid Sheik Uddin tenpence, and
+admired her purchase very much.  She dressed Sonny Sahib in it
+doubtfully, however, with misgivings as to what his father would
+say.  Certainly it was good cloth, of a pretty colour, and well
+made, but even to Tooni, Sonny Sahib looked queer.  Abdul had no
+opinion, except about the price.  He grumbled at that, but then he
+had grumbled steadily for two years, yet whenever Tooni proposed
+that they should go and find the captain-sahib, had said no, it was
+far, and he was an old man.  Tooni should go when he was dead.
+
+Besides, Abdul liked to hear the little fellow call him 'Bap,'
+which meant 'Father,' and to feel his old brown finger clasped by
+small pink and white ones, as he and Sonny Sahib toddled into the
+bazar together.  He liked to hear Sonny Sahib's laugh, too; it was
+quite a different laugh from any other boy's in Rubbulgurh, and it
+came oftener.  He was a merry little fellow, blue-eyed, with very
+yellow wavy hair, exactly, Tooni often thought, like his mother's.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+
+
+It was a grief to Tooni, who could not understand it; but Sonny
+Sahib perversely refused to talk in his own tongue.  She did all
+she could to help him.  When he was a year old she cut an almond in
+two, and gave half to Sonny Sahib and half to the green parrot that
+swung all day in a cage in the door of the hut and had a fine gift
+of conversation; if anything would make the baby talk properly that
+would.  Later on she taught him all the English words she
+remembered herself, which were three, 'bruss' and 'wass' and
+'isstockin',' her limited but very useful vocabulary as lady's-
+maid.  He learned them very well, but he continued to know only
+three, and he did not use them very often, which Tooni found
+strange.  Tooni thought the baba should have inherited his mother's
+language with his blue eyes and his white skin.  Meanwhile, Sonny
+Sahib, playing every morning and evening under the peepul-tree,
+learned to talk in the tongue of the little brown boys who played
+there too.
+
+When Sonny Sahib was four he could drive the big black hairy
+buffaloes home from the village outskirts to be milked.  Abdul
+walked beside him, but Sonny Sahib did all the shouting and the
+beating with a bit of stick, which the buffaloes must have
+privately smiled at when they felt it on their muddy flanks, that
+is if a buffalo ever smiles, which one cannot help thinking
+doubtful.  Sonny Sahib liked buffalo milk, and had it every day for
+his dinner with chupatties, and sometimes, for a treat, a bit of
+roast kid.  Chupatties are like pancakes with everything that is
+nice left out of them, and were very popular in Rubbulgurh.  Sonny
+Sahib thought nothing in the world could be better, except the
+roast kid.  On days of festival Abdul always gave him a pice to buy
+sweetmeats with, and he drove a hard bargain with either Wahid Khan
+or Sheik Luteef, who were rival dealers.  Sonny Sahib always got
+more of the sticky brown balls of sugar and butter and cocoa-nut
+for his pice than any of the other boys.  Wahid Khan and Sheik
+Luteef both thought it brought them luck to sell to him.  But
+afterwards Sonny Sahib invariably divided his purchase with whoever
+happened to be his bosom friend at the time--the daughter of Ram
+Dass, the blacksmith, or the son of Chundaputty, the beater of
+brass--in which he differed altogether from the other boys, and
+which made it fair perhaps.
+
+At six Sonny Sahib began to find the other boys unsatisfactory in a
+number of ways.  He was tired of making patterns in the dust with
+marigolds for one thing.  He wanted to pretend.  It was his
+birthright to pretend, in a large active way, and he couldn't carry
+it out.  The other boys didn't care about making believe soldiers,
+and running and hiding and shouting and beating Sonny Sahib's tom-
+tom, which made a splendid drum.  They liked beating the tom-tom,
+but they always wanted to sit round in a ring and listen to it,
+which Sonny Sahib thought very poor kind of fun indeed.  They
+wouldn't even pretend to be elephants, or horses, or buffaloes.
+Sonny Sahib had to represent them all himself; and it is no wonder
+that with a whole menagerie, as it were, upon his shoulders, he
+grew a little tired sometimes.  Also he was the only boy in
+Rubbulgurh who cared to climb a tree that had no fruit on it, or
+would venture beyond the lower branches even for mangoes or
+tamarinds.  And one day when he found a weaver-bird's nest in a
+bush with three white eggs in it, a splendid nest, stock-full of
+the fireflies that light the little hen at night, he showed it
+privately first to Hurry Ghose, and then to Sumpsi Din, and lastly
+to Budhoo, the sweeper's son; and not one of them could he coax to
+carry off a single egg in company with him.  Sonny Sahib recognised
+the force of public opinion, and left the weaver-bird to her house-
+keeping in peace, but he felt privately injured by it.
+
+Certainly the other boys could tell wonderful stories--stories of
+princesses and fairies and demons--Sumpsi Din's were the best--that
+made Sonny Sahib's blue eyes widen in the dark, when they all sat
+together on a charpoy by the door of the hut, and the stars
+glimmered through the tamarind-trees.  A charpoy is a bed, and
+everybody in Rubbulgurh puts one outside, for sociability, in the
+evening.  Not much of a bed, only four short rickety legs held
+together with knotted string, but it answers very well.
+
+Sonny Sahib didn't seem to know any stories--he could only tell the
+old one about the fighting Abdul saw over and over again--but it
+was the single thing they could do better than he did.  On the
+whole he began to prefer the society of Abdul's black and white
+goats, which bore a strong resemblance to Abdul himself, by the
+way, and had more of the spirit of adventure.  It was the goat, for
+example, that taught Sonny Sahib to walk on the extreme edge of the
+housetop and not tumble over.  In time they became great friends,
+Sonny Sahib and the goat, and always, when it was not too hot, they
+slept together.
+
+Then two things happened.  First, Abdul died, and Sonny Sahib
+became acquainted with grief, both according to his own nature and
+according to the law of Mahomed.  Then, after he and Tooni had
+mourned sincerely with very little to eat for nine days, there
+clattered one day a horseman through the village at such a pace
+that everybody ran out to see.  And he was worth seeing, that
+horseman, in a blue turban as big as a little tub, a yellow coat,
+red trousers with gold lace on them, and long boots that stuck out
+far on either side; and an embroidered saddle and a tasselled
+bridle, and a pink-nosed white charger that stepped and pranced in
+the bazar so that Ram Dass himself had to get out of the way.  It
+ought to be said that the horseman's clothes did not fit him very
+well, that his saddle girth was helped out by a bit of rope, and
+that his charger was rather tender on his near fore-foot; but these
+are not things that would be noticed in Rubbulgurh, being lost in
+the general splendour of his appearance.
+
+Sonny Sahib ran after the horseman with all the other boys, until,
+to everybody's astonishment, he stopped with tremendous prancings
+at Tooni's mud doorstep, where she sat to watch him go by.  Then
+Sonny Sahib slipped away.  He was afraid--he did not know of what.
+He ran half a mile beyond the village, and helped Sumpsi Din keep
+the parrots out of his father's millet crop all day long.  Nor did
+he say a word to Sumpsi Din about it, for fear he should be
+persuaded to go back again.  Instead, he let Sumpsi Din sleep for
+long hours at a time face-downwards on his arm in the sun, which
+was what Sumpsi Din liked best in the world, while he, Sonny Sahib,
+clapped his hands a hundred times at the little green thieves,
+abusing them roundly, and wondering always at the back of his head
+why so splendid a horseman should have stopped at his particular
+doorstep.  So it was not until the evening, when he came back very
+hungry, hoping the horseman would be gone, that he heard Tooni's
+wonderful news.  Before she gave him water or oil, or even a
+chupatty, Tooni told him, holding his hand in hers.
+
+'The Maharajah has sent for you, O noonday kite; where have you
+been in the sun?  The Maharajah has sent for you, lotus-eyed one,
+and I, though I am grown too old for journeys, must go also to the
+palace of the Maharajah!  Oh, it is very far, and I know not what
+he desires, the Maharajah!  My heart is split in two, little Sahib!
+This khaber is the cat's moon to me.  I will never sleep again!'
+
+Then for some reason the fear went out of Sonny Sahib.  'Am I not
+going with you, Tooni-ji?' said he, which was his way of saying
+'dear Tooni.'  'There is no cause for fear.  And will it not be
+very beautiful, the palace of the Maharajah?  Sumpsi Din says that
+it is built of gold and silver.  And now I should like six
+chupatties, and some milk and some fried brinjal, like yesterday's,
+only more, Tooni-ji.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+
+
+The palace of the Maharajah at Lalpore was not exactly built of
+gold and silver; but if it had been, Sonny Sahib could hardly have
+thought it a finer place.  It had a wall all round it, even on the
+side where the river ran, and inside the wall were courts and
+gardens with fountains and roses in them, divided by other walls,
+and pillared verandahs, where little green lizards ran about in the
+sun, and a great many stables, where the Maharajah's horses pawed
+and champed to be let out and ridden.  The palace itself was a
+whole story higher than the stables, and consisted of a wilderness
+of little halls with grated windows.  It smelt rather too strong of
+attar of roses in there--the Maharajah was fond of attar of roses--
+but the decorations on the whitewashed walls, in red and yellow,
+were very wonderful indeed.  The courtyards and the verandahs were
+full of people, soldiers, syces, merchants with their packs,
+sweetmeat sellers, barbers; only the gardens were empty.  Sonny
+Sahib thought that if he lived in the palace he would stay always
+in the gardens, watching the red-spotted fish in the fountains, and
+gathering the roses; but the people who did live there seemed to
+prefer smoking long bubbling pipes in company, or disputing over
+their bargains, or sleeping by the hour in the shade of the
+courtyard walls.  There were no women anywhere; but if Sonny Sahib
+had possessed the ears or the eyes of the country, he might have
+heard many swishings and patterings and whisperings behind
+curtained doors, and have seen many fingers on the curtains' edge
+and eyes at the barred windows as he went by.
+
+This was the palace, and the palace was the crown of Lalpore, which
+was built on the top of a hill, and could lock itself in behind
+walls ten feet thick all round, if an enemy came that way.
+
+The Maharajah was to receive them in one of the pillared verandahs,
+one that looked out over the river, where there was a single great
+ivory chair, with a red satin cushion, and a large piece of carpet
+in front of it, and nothing else.  It was the only chair in the
+palace, probably the only chair in all the Maharajah's State of
+Chita, and as Sonny Sahib had never seen a chair before he found it
+very interesting.  He and Tooni inspected it from a respectful
+distance, and then withdrew to the very farthest corner of the
+verandah to wait for the Maharajah.  A long time they waited, and
+yet Tooni would not sit down.  What might not the Maharajah do if
+he came and found them disrespectfully seated in his audience hall!
+Patiently she stood, first on one foot and then on the other, with
+her lips all puckered up and her eyes on the floor, thinking of
+things that would be polite enough to say to a Maharajah.  They
+were so troublesome to think of, that she could not attend to what
+Sonny Sahib said at all, even when he asked her for the sixth time
+how you made a peacock with blue glass eyes, like the one on each
+arm of His Highness's chair.  Sonny Sahib grew quite tired of
+watching the mud-turtle that was paddling about in a pool of the
+shallow river among the yellow sands down below, and of counting
+the camels that were wading across it, carrying their packs and
+their masters; and yet the Maharajah did not come.
+
+'Tooni,' he said presently, 'without doubt I must sit down,' and
+down he sat plumply, with his back against the wall, and his two
+small legs, in their very best striped cotton trousers, stretched
+out in front of him.
+
+As a matter of fact the Maharajah was asleep, and had forgotten all
+about Sonny Sahib in the hall of audience.  It was Moti[1] who
+reminded him, whispering in his ear until he awoke.  Moti was the
+little Maharajah, and that was his pet name.  Moti was privileged
+to remind his father of things.
+
+
+[1] A pearl.
+
+
+So Moti and the Maharajah went down to the audience hall together,
+and there they found Sonny Sahib asleep too, which was not
+wonderful, considering that the Maharajah had kept him waiting two
+hours and a quarter.  Perhaps this occurred to His Highness, and
+prevented him from being angry.  At all events, as Sonny Sahib
+scrambled to his feet in response to a terrified tug from Tooni, he
+did not look very angry.
+
+Sonny Sahib saw a little lean old man, with soft sunken black eyes,
+and a face like a withered potato.  He wore a crimson velvet
+smoking-cap upon his head, and was buttoned up to the chin in a
+long tight coat of blue and yellow brocade.  Above the collar and
+below the sleeves of the coat showed the neck and cuffs of an
+English linen shirt, which were crumpled and not particularly
+clean.  The cuffs were so big that the Maharajah's thin little
+brown fingers were almost lost in them.  The blue and yellow
+brocaded coat was buttoned up with emeralds, but the Maharajah
+shuffled along in a pair of old carpet slippers, which to Sonny
+Sahib were the most remarkable features of his attire.  So much
+occupied, indeed, was Sonny Sahib in looking at the Maharajah's
+slippers, that he quite forgot to make his salaam.  As for Tooni,
+she was lying flat at their Highnesses' feet, talking indistinctly
+into the marble floor.
+
+The little Highness was much pleasanter to look at than his father.
+He had large dark eyes and soft light-brown cheeks, and he was all
+dressed in pink satin, with a little jewelled cap, and his long
+black hair tied up in a hard knot at the back of his neck.  The
+little Highness looked at Sonny Sahib curiously, and then tugged at
+his father's sleeve.
+
+'Let him come with me now, immediately,' said the little Maharajah;
+'he has a face of gold.'
+
+The Maharajah sat down, not in his chair--he did not greatly like
+sitting in his chair--but on the carpet.
+
+'Whence do you come?' said he to Tooni.
+
+'Protector of the poor, from Rubbulgurh.'
+
+'Where your Highness sent to for us,' added Sonny Sahib.  'Tooni,
+why do you pinch me?'
+
+His Highness looked disconcerted for a moment.  As a matter of fact
+he had known all that Tooni or Sonny Sahib could tell him about
+themselves for three years, but he considered it more dignified to
+appear as if he knew nothing.
+
+'This is a child of the mlechas,' said the Maharajah, which was not
+a very polite way of saying that he was English.
+
+'Protector of the poor, yes.'
+
+'Account to me for him.  How old is he?'
+
+'Seven years, great King.'
+
+'And two months, Tooni-ji.  Your Highness, may I sit down?'
+
+'As old as the Folly.'[1]
+
+
+[1] Native term for the Mutiny.
+
+
+'He came of the Folly, Hazur.  His mother died by the sepoys in
+Cawnpore, his father--also,' said Tooni, for she feared to be
+blamed for not having found Sonny Sahib's father.  As she told the
+story once again to the Maharajah, adding many things that Sonny
+Sahib had never heard before, he became so much interested that he
+stood on one foot for five minutes at a time, and quite forgot to
+ask His Highness again if he might sit down.
+
+The Maharajah heard her to the end without a word or a change of
+expression.  When she had finished, 'My soldiers were not there,'
+he said thoughtfully, and with a shade of regret, which was not, I
+fear, at the thought of any good they might have done.  Then he
+seemed to reflect, while Tooni stood before him with her hands
+joined together at the finger-tips and her head bowed.
+
+'Then, without permission, you brought this child of outcasts into
+my State,' said he at last.  'That was an offence.'
+
+Tooni struck her forehead with her hand.
+
+'Your Highness is my father and my mother!' she sobbed, 'I could
+not leave it to the jackals.'
+
+'You are a wretched Mussulman, the daughter of cow-killers, and you
+may have known no better--'
+
+'Your Highness!' remarked Sonny Sahib, with respectful indignation,
+'Adam had two sons, one was buried and one was burned--'
+
+'Choop!' said the Maharajah crossly.  You might almost guess that
+'Choop' meant 'Be quiet!'
+
+'But it was an offence,' he continued.
+
+'Protector of the poor, I meant no harm.'
+
+'That is true talk.  And you shall receive no harm.  But you must
+leave the boy with me.  I want him to play games with my son, to
+amuse my son.  For thirty days my son has asked this of me, and ten
+days ago his mother died--so he must have it.'
+
+Tooni salaamed humbly.  'If the boy finds favour in Your Highness's
+eyes it is very good,' she said simply, and turned to go.
+
+'Stop,' said the Maharajah.  'I will do justice in this matter.  I
+desire the boy, but I have brought his price.  Where is it, Moti-
+ji?'
+
+The little Maharajah laughed with delight, and drew from behind him
+a jingling bag.
+
+'It is one hundred and fifty rupees,' said the Maharajah.  'Give it
+to the woman, Moti.'  And the child held it out to her.
+
+Tooni looked at the bag, and then at Sonny Sahib, salaamed and
+hesitated.  It was a provision for the rest of her life, as lives
+go in Rajputana.
+
+'Is it not enough!' asked the Maharajah irritably, while the little
+prince's face fell.
+
+'Your Highness,' stammered Tooni, 'it is great riches--may roses be
+to your mouth!  But I have a desire--rather than the money--'
+
+'What is your desire?' cried the little prince.  'Say it.  In a
+breath my father will allow it.  I want the gold-faced one to come
+and play.'
+
+The Maharajah nodded, and this time Tooni lay down at the feet of
+the little prince.
+
+'It is,' said she, 'that--I am a widow and old--that I also may
+live in the farthest corner within the courtyard walls, with the
+boy.'
+
+The Maharajah slipped the bag quickly into the pocket of his blue
+and yellow coat.
+
+'It is a strange preference,' he said, 'but the Mussulmans have no
+minds.  It may be.'
+
+Tooni kissed his feet, and Sonny Sahib nodded approval at him.
+Somehow, Sonny Sahib never could be taught good Rajput manners.
+
+'The boy is well grown,' said the Maharajah, turning upon his heel.
+'What is his name?'
+
+'Protector of the poor,' answered Tooni, quivering with delight,
+'his name is Sonny Sahib.'
+
+Perhaps nobody has told you why the English are called Sahibs in
+India.  It is because they rule there.
+
+The Maharajah's face went all into a pucker of angry wrinkles, and
+his eyes shone like little coals.
+
+'What talk is that?' he said angrily.  'His great-grandfather was a
+monkey!  There is only one master here.  Pig's daughter, his name
+is Sunni!'
+
+Tooni did not dare to say a word, and even the little prince was
+silent.
+
+'Look you,' said the old man to Sonny Sahib.  'Follow my son, the
+Maharajah, into the courtyard, and there do his pleasure.  Do you
+understand?  FOLLOW him!'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+
+
+'Sunni,' said Moti, as the two boys rode through the gates of the
+courtyard a year later, 'a man of your race has come here, and my
+father has permitted him to remain.  My father has given him the
+old empty jail to live in, behind the monkey temple.  They say many
+curious things are in his house.  Let us ride past it.'
+
+In his whole life Sunni had never heard such an interesting piece
+of news before--even Tooni's, about the Maharajah's horseman, was
+nothing to this.  'Why is he come?' he asked, putting his little
+red Arab into a trot.
+
+'To bring your gods to the Rajputs.'
+
+'I have no gods,' declared Sunni.  'Kali is so ugly--I have no
+heart for her.  Ganesh makes me laugh, with his elephant's head;
+and Tooni says that Allah is not my God.'
+
+'Tooni says,' Sunni went on reflectively, 'that my God is in her
+little black book.  But I have never seen him.'
+
+Perhaps this Englishman will show him to you,' suggested Moti.
+
+'But His Highness, your father, will he allow strange gods to be
+brought to the people?'
+
+'No,' said Moti, 'the people will not look at them.  Every one has
+been warned.  But the stranger is to remain, that he may teach me
+English.  I do not wish to learn English--or anything.  It is
+always so hot when the pundit comes.  But my father wishes it.'
+
+A pundit is a wise old man who generally has a long white beard,
+and thinks nothing in the world is so enjoyable as Sanskrit or
+Arabic.  Sunni, too, found it hot when the pundit came.  But an
+English pundit--
+
+'Moti-ji,' said Sunni, laying his arm around the little prince's
+neck as they rode together, 'do you love me?'
+
+Moti caught Sunni's hand as it dropped over his shoulder.  'You
+know that in my heart there is only my father's face and yours,
+Sahib's son,' he said.
+
+'Will you do one thing, then, for love of me?' asked Sunni eagerly.
+'Will you ask of the Maharajah, your father, that I also may learn
+English from the stranger?'
+
+'No,' said Moti mischievously, 'because it is already spoken,
+Sunni-ji.  I said that I would not learn unless you also were
+compelled to learn, so that the time should not be lost between us.
+Now let us gallop very fast past the jail, lest the Englishman
+should think we wish to see him.  He is to be brought to me to-
+morrow at sundown.'
+
+The Englishman at that moment was unpacking his books and his
+bottles, and thinking about how he could best begin the work he had
+come to Lalpore to do.  He was a medical missionary, and as they
+had every variety of disease in Lalpore, and the population was
+entirely heathen, we may think it likely that he had too much on
+his mind to run to the window to see such very young royalty ride
+by.
+
+'Sunni-ji,' said Moti that afternoon in the garden, 'I am very
+tired of talking of this Englishman.'
+
+'I could talk of him for nine moons,' said Sunni; and then
+something occurred which changed the subject as completely as even
+the little prince could desire.  This was a garden for the pleasure
+of the ladies of the court; they never came out in it, but their
+apartments looked down upon it, and a very high wall screened it
+from the rest of the world.  The Maharajah and Moti and Sunni were
+the only people who might ever walk there.  As the boys turned at
+the end of a path directly under the gratings, they heard a soft
+voice say 'Moti!'
+
+'That is Matiya,' said the little prince.  'I do not like Matiya.
+What is it, Matiya?'
+
+'It is not Matiya,' said the voice quickly, 'it is Tarra.  Here is
+a gift from the heart of Tarra, little parrot, a gift for you, and
+a gift for the Sahib's son; also a sweet cake, but the cake is for
+Moti.'
+
+'I am sure it was Matiya,' said Moti, running to pick the packet
+out of the rose-bush it had fallen into; 'but Matiya was never kind
+before.'
+
+The packet held a necklace and an armlet.  The necklace was of
+little pearls and big amethysts strung upon fine wire, three rows
+of pearls, and then an amethyst, and was very lovely.  The armlet
+was of gold, with small rubies and turquoises set in a pattern.
+The boys looked at them more or less indifferently.  They had seen
+so many jewels.
+
+'Matiya--if you think it was Matiya--makes pretty gifts,' said
+Sunni, 'and the Maharajah will keep your necklace for you for ever
+in an iron box.  But this armlet will get broken just as the other
+two armlets that were given to me have got broken.  I cannot wear
+armlets and play polo, and I would rather play polo.'
+
+'That is because you were clumsy,' Moti answered.  Moti was peevish
+that afternoon.  The Maharajah had refused him a gun, and he
+particularly wanted a gun, not to shoot anything, but to frighten
+the crows with and perhaps the coolie-folk.  To console himself
+Moti had eaten twice as many sweetmeats as were good for him, and
+was in a bad temper accordingly.
+
+'Now they are certainly of Tarra, these jewels,' exclaimed Sunni,
+'I remember that necklace upon her neck, for every time Tarra has
+kissed me, that fifth stone which has been broken in the cutting
+has scratched my face.'
+
+'In one word,' said Moti imperiously, 'it was the voice of Matiya.
+And this perplexes me, for Matiya, hating my mother, hates me also,
+I think.'
+
+'Why did she hate your mother?' asked Sunni.
+
+'How stupid you are to-day!  You have heard the story two hundred
+times!  Because she thought that she should have been chosen to be
+queen instead of my mother.  It is true that she was more
+beautiful, but my mother was a pundita.  And she was not chosen.
+She is only second in the palace.  And she has no children, while
+my mother was the mother of a king.'
+
+'No,' said Sunni, 'I never heard that before, Moti.'
+
+'But I say you have!  Two hundred times!  And look, O thoughtless
+one, you have gone between me and the sun, so that even now your
+shadow falls upon my sugar-cake--my cake stuffed with almonds,
+which is the kind I most love, and therefore I cannot eat it.
+There,' cried Moti, contemptuously, 'take it yourself and eat it--
+you have no caste to break.'
+
+For a minute Sunni was as angry as possible.  Then he reflected
+that it was silly to be angry with a person who was not very well.
+
+'Listen, Moti,' he said, 'that was indeed a fault.  I should have
+walked to the north.  But I will not eat your cake--let us give it
+to the red and gold fishes in the fountain.'
+
+'Some of it,' said Moti, appeased, 'and some to my new little
+monkey--my talking monkey.'
+
+The fishes darted up for the crumbs greedily, but the monkey was
+not as grateful for her share as she ought to have been.  She took
+it, smelt it, wiped it vigorously on the ground, smelt it again,
+and chattered angrily at the boys; then she went nimbly hand over
+hand to the very top of the banyan-tree she lived in; and then she
+deliberately broke it into little pieces and pelted the givers with
+them.
+
+'She is not hungry to-day,' said Moti.  'Let us take out the
+falcons.'
+
+Next morning the Maharajah was very much annoyed by the
+intelligence that all the little red-spotted fishes were floating
+flabby and flat and dead among the lily pads of the fountain--there
+were few things except Moti that the Maharajah loved better than
+his little red-spotted fishes.  He wanted very particularly to know
+why they should have died in this unanimous and apparently
+preconcerted way.  The gods had probably killed them by lightning,
+but the Maharajah wanted to know.  So he sent for the Englishman,
+who did not mind touching a dead thing, and the Englishman told him
+that the little red-spotted fishes had undoubtedly been poisoned.
+Moti was listening when the doctor said this.
+
+'It could not have been the cake,' said Moti.
+
+But when all was looked into, including one of the little fishes,
+Dr. Roberts found that it undoubtedly had been the cake.  Scraps of
+it were still lying about the banyan-tree to help him to this
+conclusion, and the monkey chattered as if she could give evidence,
+too, if anybody would listen.  But she gave evidence enough in not
+eating it.  Everybody, that is, everybody in Rajputana, knows that
+you can never poison a monkey.  The little prince maintained that
+the voice he heard was the voice of Matiya, yet every one
+recognised the jewels to be Tarra's.  There was nothing else to go
+upon, and the Maharajah decided that it was impossible to tell
+which of the two had wickedly tried to poison his eldest son.  He
+arranged, however, that they should both disappear--he could not
+possibly risk a mistake in the matter.  And I wish that had been
+the greatest of the Maharajah's injustices.  When the truth came
+out, later, that it was undoubtedly Matiya, the Maharajah said that
+he had always been a good deal of that opinion, and built a
+beautiful domed white marble tomb, partly in memory of Tarra and
+partly, I fear, to commemorate his own sagacity, which may seem,
+under the circumstances, a little odd.
+
+The really curious thing was, however, that out of it all came
+honour and glory for Sunni.  For what, asked the Maharajah, had
+prevented the poisoning of his son?  What but the shadow of Sunni,
+which fell upon the cake, so that Moti could not eat it!
+Therefore, without doubt, Sunni had saved the life of a king; and
+he could ask nothing that should not be granted to him; he should
+stand always near the throne.  Sunni felt very proud and important,
+he did not know exactly why; but he could not think of anything he
+wanted, except to learn his own language from the Englishman.
+
+'Oh, foolish bargainer!' cried Moti, 'when you know that has been
+given already!'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+
+
+
+Dr. Roberts, who lived, by the Maharajah's kind permission, in the
+jail behind the monkey temple, soon found himself in rather an
+awkward dilemma.  Not in regard to the monkeys.  They were
+certainly troublesome.  They stole his biscuits, and made holes in
+his roof, and tore up the reports he wrote for the S.P.C.K. in
+England.  Dr. Roberts made allowance for the monkeys, however.  He
+had come to take away their sacred character, and nobody could
+expect them to like it.  If you had asked Dr. Roberts what his
+difficulty was he would have shown you Sonny Sahib.  The discovery
+was so wonderful that he had made.  He had found a yellow-haired,
+blue-eyed English boy in a walled palace of Rajputana, five hundred
+miles from any one of his race.  The boy was happy, healthy, and
+well content.  That much the Maharajah had pointed out to him; that
+much he could see for himself.  Beyond that the Maharajah had
+discouraged Dr. Roberts' interest.  The boy's name was Sunni, he
+had no other name, he had come 'under the protection' of the
+Maharajah when he was very young; and that was all His Highness
+could be induced to say.  Any more pointed inquiries he was
+entirely unable to understand.  There seemed to be no one else who
+knew.  Tooni could have told him, but Tooni was under orders that
+she did not dare to disobey.  In the bazar two or three conflicting
+stories, equally wonderful, were told of Sunni; but none that Dr.
+Roberts could believe.  In the end he found out about Sunni from
+Sunni himself, who had never forgotten one word of what Tooni told
+the Maharajah.  Sunni mentioned also, with considerable pride, that
+he had known three English words for a long time--'wass' and
+'bruss' and 'isstockin'.'
+
+Then Dr. Roberts, with his heart full of the awful grief of the
+Mutiny, and thinking how gladly this waif and stray would be
+received by somebody, hurried to the Maharajah, and begged that the
+boy might be given back to his own people, that he, Dr. Roberts,
+might take him back to his own people at his personal risk and
+expense; that inquiries might at least be set on foot to find his
+relatives.
+
+'Yes,' said the Maharajah, 'but not yet, ee-Wobbis.  The boy will
+be well here for a year, and you shall teach him.  At the end of
+that time we will speak again of this matter.'
+
+Dr. Roberts was not satisfied.  He asked the Maharajah at all
+events to allow Sunni to live with him in his empty jail, but His
+Highness refused absolutely.
+
+'And look you, ee-Wobbis,' said he, 'I have promised the Viceroy in
+Calcutta that you shall be safe in my country, and you shall be
+safe, though I never asked you to come here.  But if any khaber
+goes to Calcutta about this boy, and if there is the least
+confusion regarding him, your mouth shall be stopped, and you shall
+not talk any more to my people.  For my part, I do not like your
+medicines, and you have not yet cured Proteb Singh of his short
+leg; he goes as lame as ever!'
+
+This was Dr. Roberts' difficulty; his mouth would be stopped.  He
+did not doubt the Maharajah.  If he wrote to Calcutta that a Rajput
+prince still held a hostage from the Mutiny, and made a
+disturbance, there would be an end to the work he had begun under
+the shadow of the palace wall.  And the work was prospering so
+well!  The people were listening now, Dr. Roberts thought, and
+certainly he had been able to relieve a great deal of their
+physical misery.  Would he be justified in writing to Calcutta?
+Dr. Roberts thought about it very long and very seriously.  In the
+end he believed that he would not be justified, at least until the
+year was over of which the Maharajah spoke.  Then if His Highness
+did not keep his promise, Dr. Roberts would see about it.
+
+So the year went by; the months when the sun blazed straight across
+the sky overhead, and everybody slept at noonday--the months when a
+gray sheet of rain hung from the clouds for days together, and the
+months when all the Maharajah's dominions were full of splendid
+yellow lights and pleasant winds--when the teak wood trees dropped
+their big dusty leaves, and the nights were sharply cold, and
+Rajputana pretended that it was winter.  Dr. Roberts and Sunni were
+very well then, but Moti shrivelled up and coughed the day through,
+and the Maharajah, when he went out to drive, wrapped himself up in
+Cashmere shawls, head and ears and all.
+
+The boys learnt as much English as could possibly be expected of
+them; Sunni learnt more, because Dr. Roberts made it a point that
+he should.  Besides, he became a great friend of Dr. Roberts, who
+began by begging that Sunni might be allowed to ride with him, then
+to drive with him, and finally to spend two or three days at a time
+with him.  Sunni had more to learn than Moti had.  He had a good
+many things to forget, too, which gave him almost as much trouble.
+
+The Maharajah found it as difficult as ever to like ee-Wobbis's
+medicines, but he considered them excellent for Moti's cough, and
+only complained that his son should be given so little of them.
+The royal treasury would pay for a whole bottle--why should the
+little prince get only a spoonful?  Nevertheless Dr. Roberts stood
+well in the estimation of the Maharajah, who arranged that a great
+many things should be done as the missionary suggested.  In one
+case the Maharajah had the palace well, the oldest palace well,
+cleaned out--a thing that nobody had ever thought of before; and he
+was surprised to find what was at the bottom of it.  Dr. Roberts
+advised putting down a few drains too, and making a road from the
+city of the Maharajah to the great highways that led to the
+Viceroy's India.  The Maharajah laid the drains, and said he would
+think about the road.  Then Dr. Roberts suggested that a hospital
+would be a good thing, and the Maharajah said he would think about
+that too.
+
+Sunni was growing fast; he was too tall and thin for nine years
+old.  Dr. Roberts took anxious care of him, thinking of the unknown
+grandfather and grandmother in England, and how he could best tell
+them of this boy of theirs, who read Urdu better than English, and
+wore embroidered slippers turned squarely up at the toes, and asked
+such strange questions about his father's God.  But when he taxed
+the Maharajah with his promise, His Highness simply repeated, in
+somewhat more amiable terms, his answer of the year before.  And
+the work was now prospering more than ever.  When once he had got
+the hospital, Dr. Roberts made up his mind that he would take
+definite measures; but he would get the hospital first.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+
+
+
+I suppose it was about that time that Surji Rao began to consider
+whether it was after all for the best interests of the State that
+ee-Wobbis should remain in it.  Surji Rao was first Minister to the
+Maharajah, and a very important person.  He had charge of the
+Treasury, and it was his business to produce every day one hundred
+fresh rupees to put into it.  This was his duty, and whether the
+harvests had been good and the cattle many, or whether the locusts
+and the drought had made the people poor, Surji Rao did his duty.
+If ever he should fail, there hung a large and heavy shoe upon the
+wall of the Maharajah's apartment, which daily suggested personal
+chastisement and a possible loss of dignity to Surji Rao.
+
+Dr. Roberts was making serious demands upon the Treasury, and
+proposed to make others more serious still.  Worse than that, he
+was supplanting Surji Rao in the confidence and affection of the
+Maharajah.  Worse still, he was making a pundit of that outcast
+boy, who had been already too much favoured in the palace, so that
+he might very well grow up to be Minister of the Treasury instead
+of Rasso, son of Surji Rao--a thing unendurable.  Surji Rao was the
+fattest man in the State, so fat that it was said he sat down only
+twice a day; but he lay awake on sultry nights for so many weeks
+reflecting upon this, that he grew obviously, almost ostentatiously,
+thin.  To this he added such an extremely dolorous expression of
+countenance that it was impossible for the Maharajah, out of sheer
+curiosity, to refrain from asking him what was the matter.
+
+'My father and my mother!  I grow poor with thinking that the feet
+of strangers are in the palace of the King, and what may come of
+it.'
+
+The Maharajah laughed and put his arm about the shoulders of Surji
+Rao.
+
+'I will give you a tub of melted butter to grow fat upon again, and
+two days to eat it, though indeed with less on your bones you were
+a better Rajput.  What should come of it, Surji Rao?'
+
+The Minister sheathed the anger that leapt up behind his eyes in a
+smile.  Then he answered gravely--
+
+'What should come of it but more strangers?  Is it not desired to
+make a road for their guns and their horses?  And talk and
+treaties, and tying of the hand and binding of the foot, until at
+last that great Jan Larrens[1] himself will ride up to the gate of
+the city and refuse to go away until Your Highness sends a bag of
+gold mohurs to the British Raj, as he has done before.'
+
+
+[1] John Lawrence, afterwards Lord Lawrence and Viceroy of India.
+
+
+'I do not think I will make the road,' said the Maharajah
+reflectively.
+
+'King, you are the wisest of men, and therefore your own best
+counsellor.  It is well decided.  But the Rajputs are all sons of
+one father, and even now there is grief among the chief of them
+that outcasts should be dwelling in the King's favour.'
+
+'I will not make the road,' said the Maharajah.  'Enough!'
+
+Surji Rao thought it was not quite enough, however, and took
+various means to obtain more, means that would never be thought of
+anywhere but in countries where the sun beats upon the plots of
+Ministers and ferments fanaticism in the heads of the people.  He
+talked to the Rajput chiefs, and persuaded them--they were not
+difficult to persuade--that Dr. Roberts was an agent and a spy of
+the English Government at Calcutta, that his medicines were a sham.
+When it was necessary, Surji Rao said that the medicines were a
+slow form of poison, but generally he said they were a sham.  He
+persuaded as many of the chiefs as dared, to remonstrate with the
+Maharajah, and to follow his example of going about looking as if
+they were upon the brink of some terrible disaster.  Surji Rao's
+wife was a clever woman, and she arranged such a feeling in the
+Maharajah's zenana, that one day as Dr. Roberts passed along a
+corridor to His Highness's apartment, a curtain opened swiftly, and
+some one in the dark behind spat at him.  Amongst them they managed
+to make His Highness extremely uncomfortable.  But the old man
+continued to decline obstinately to send the missionary back.
+
+Then it became obvious to Surji Rao that Dr. Roberts must be
+disposed of otherwise.  He went about that in the same elaborate
+and ingenious way.  His arrangements required time, but there is
+always plenty of time in Rajputana.  He became friendly with Dr.
+Roberts, and encouraged the hospital.  He did not wish in any way
+to be complicated with his arrangements.  Nobody else became
+friendly.  Surji Rao took care of that.  And at last one morning a
+report went like wildfire about the palace and the city that the
+missionary had killed a sacred bull, set free in honour of Krishna
+at the birth of a son to Maun Rao, the chief of the Maharajah's
+generals.  Certainly the bull was found slaughtered behind the
+monkey temple, and certainly Dr. Roberts had beefsteak for
+breakfast that day.  Such a clamour rang through the palace about
+it that the Maharajah sent for the missionary, partly to inquire
+into the matter, and partly with a view to protect him.
+
+It was very unsatisfactory--the missionary did not know how the
+bull came to be killed behind his house, and, in spite of all the
+Maharajah's hints, would not invent a story to account for it.  The
+Maharajah could have accounted for it fifty times over, if it had
+happened to him.  Besides, Dr. Roberts freely admitted having
+breakfasted upon beefsteak, and didn't know where it had come from!
+He rode home through an angry crowd, and nobody at all came for
+medicines that day.
+
+Two days later the Rajput general's baby died--could anything else
+have been expected?  The general went straight to the Maharajah to
+ask for vengeance, but His Highness, knowing why the chief had
+come, sent word that he was ill--he would see Maun Rao to-morrow.
+To-morrow he had not recovered, nor even the day after; but in the
+meantime he had been well enough to send word to Dr. Roberts that
+if he wished to go away he should have two camels and an escort.
+Dr. Roberts sent to ask whether Sunni might go with him, but to
+this the Maharajah replied by an absolute 'No.'
+
+So the missionary stayed.
+
+It was Surji Rao who brought the final word to the Maharajah.
+
+'My father and my mother!' he said, 'it is no longer possible to
+hold the people back.  It is cried abroad that this English
+hakkim[1] has given the people powder of pig's feet.  Even now they
+have set upon his house.  And to-day is the festival of Krishna.
+My heart is bursting with grief.'
+
+
+[1] 'Doctor.'
+
+
+'If Maun Rao strikes, I can do nothing,' said the Maharajah weakly.
+'He thinks the Englishman killed his son.  But look you, send Sunni
+to me.  HE saved mine.  And I tell you,' said the Maharajah,
+looking at Surji Rao fiercely with his sunken black eyes, 'not so
+much of his blood shall be shed as would stain a moth's wing.'
+
+But Maun Rao struck, and the people being told that the missionary
+was dead, went home hoping that Krishna had nothing more against
+them; they had done what they could.
+
+As to Sunni he told his grief to Tooni because it comforted him,
+and went into mourning for nine days in defiance of public opinion,
+because he owed it to the memory of a countryman.  He began, too,
+to take long restless rambles beyond the gates, and once he asked
+Tooni if she knew the road to Calcutta.
+
+'It is fifty thousand miles,' said Tooni, who had an imagination;
+'and the woods are full of tigers.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+
+
+
+The gates of Lalpore were shut, and all about her walls the yellow
+sandy plains stretched silent and empty.  There did not seem to be
+so much as a pariah dog outside.  Some pipal-trees looked over the
+walls, and a couple of very antiquated cannon looked through them,
+but nothing stirred.  It made a splendid picture at broad noon, the
+blue sky and the old red-stone city on her little hill, holding up
+her minarets and the white marble bubbles of her temples, and then
+the yellow sand drifting up; but one could not look at it long.
+Colonel Starr, from the door of his tent, half a mile away, had
+looked at it pretty steadily for two hours, so steadily that his
+eyes, red and smarting with the dust of a two hundred mile ride,
+watered copiously, and made him several degrees more uncomfortable
+than he had been before.
+
+I doubt whether any idea of the beauty of Lalpore had a place in
+the Colonel's mind, it was so full of other considerations.  He
+thought more, probably, of the thickness of its walls than of their
+colour, and speculated longer upon the position of the arsenal than
+upon the curves of the temples.  Because, in the Colonel's opinion,
+it had come to look very like fighting.  In the opinion of little
+Lieutenant Pink the fighting should have been over and done with
+yesterday, and the 17th Midlanders should be 'bagging' the
+Maharajah's artillery by now.  Little Lieutenant Pink was spoiling
+for the fray.  So were the men, most of them.  They wanted a change
+of diet.  Thomas Jones, sergeant, entirely expressed the sentiments
+of his company when he said that somebody ort to pay up for this
+blessed march, they 'adn't wore the skins off their 'eels fer two
+'undred mile to admire the bloomin' scenery.  Besides, for Thomas
+Jones's part, he was tired of living on this yere bloomin' tinned
+rock, he wanted a bit of fresh roast kid and a Lalpore curry.
+
+Colonel Starr had been sent to 'arrange,' if possible, and to fight
+if necessary.  Perhaps we need not inquire into the arrangements
+the Government had commissioned Colonel Starr to make.  They were
+arrangements of a kind frequently submitted to the princes of
+independent States in India when they are troublesome, and their
+result is that a great many native States are governed by English
+political residents, while a great many native princes attend
+parties at Government House in Calcutta.  The Maharajah of Chita
+had been very troublesome indeed.  Twice in the year his people had
+raided peaceful villages under British protection, and now he had
+killed a missionary.  It was quite time to 'arrange' the Maharajah
+of Chita, and Colonel Starr, with two guns and three hundred
+troops, had been sent to do it.
+
+His Highness, however, seemed indisposed to further his social
+prospects in Calcutta and the good of his State.  For the twenty-
+four hours they had been in camp under his walls the Maharajah had
+taken no more notice of Colonel Starr and his three hundred
+Midlanders than if they represented so many jungle bushes.  To all
+Colonel Starr's messages, diplomatic, argumentative, threatening,
+there had come the same unsatisfactory response--the Maharajah of
+Chita had no word to say to the British Raj.  And still the gates
+were shut, and still only the pipal-trees looked over the wall, and
+only the cannon looked through.
+
+By the time evening came Colonel Starr was at the end of his
+patience.  He was not, unfortunately, simultaneously at the end of
+his investigations.  He did not yet know the position or the
+contents of the arsenal, the defensibility of the walls, the water
+supply, or the number of men under arms in that silent, impassive
+red city on the hill.  The reports of the peasantry had been
+contradictory, and this ordinary means of ascertaining these things
+had failed him, while he very particularly required to know them,
+his force being small.  The Government had assured Colonel Starr
+that the Maharajah of Chita would be easy to arrange; that he was a
+tractable person, and that half the usual number of troops would be
+ample, which made His Highness's conduct, if anything, more
+annoying.  And Colonel Starr's commissariat, even in respect to
+'tinned rock,' had not been supplied with the expectation of
+besieging Lalpore.  The attack would be uncertain, and the Colonel
+hesitated the more because his instructions had been not to take
+the place if he could avoid it.  So the commanding officer paced
+his tent, and composed fresh messages to the Maharajah, while
+Lieutenant Pink wondered in noble disgust whether the expedition
+was going to end in moonshine after all, and Thomas Jones,
+sergeant, remarked hourly to his fellow-privates, 'The 17th 'aint
+come two 'undred miles for this kind of a joke.  The bloomin'
+Maharajer 'ull think we've got a funk on.'
+
+But neither Colonel Starr nor Thomas Jones was acquainted with the
+reason of the remarkable attitude of Lalpore.
+
+A week before, when the news reached him that the Viceroy was
+sending three hundred men and two guns to remonstrate with him for
+his treatment of Dr. Roberts, the Maharajah smiled, thinking of the
+bravery of his Chitans, the strength of his fortifications, the
+depth of his walls, and the wheat stored in his city granaries.
+No one had ever taken Lalpore since the Chitans took it--in all
+Rajputana there were none so cunning and so brave as the Chitans.
+As to bravery, greater than Rajput bravery simply did not exist.
+The Maharajah held a council, and they all sported with the idea of
+English soldiers coming to Lalpore.  Maun Rao begged to go out and
+meet them to avenge the insult.
+
+'Maharajah,' said he, 'the Chitans are sufficient against the
+world; why should we speak of three hundred monkeys' grandsons?  If
+the sky fell, our heads would be pillars to protect you!'
+
+And after a long discussion the Maharajah agreed to Maun Rao's
+proposal.  The English could come only one way.  A day's march from
+Lalpore they would be compelled to ford a stream.  There the
+Maharajah's army would meet them, ready, as Maun Rao said in the
+council, to play at ball with their outcast heads.  There was a
+feast afterwards, and everybody had twice as much opium as usual.
+In the midst of the revelry they made a great calculation of
+resources.  The Maharajah smiled again as he thought of the
+temerity of the English in connection with the ten thousand rounds
+of ammunition that had just come to him on camel back through
+Afghanistan from Russia--it was a lucky and timely purchase.  Surji
+Rao, Minister of the Treasury, when this was mentioned, did not
+smile.  Surji Rao had bought the cartridges at a very large
+discount, which did not appear in the bill, and he knew that not
+even Chitan valour could make more than one in ten of them go off.
+Therefore, when the Maharajah congratulated Surji Rao upon his
+foresight in urging the replenishment of the arsenal at this
+particular time, Surji Rao found it very difficult to congratulate
+himself.
+
+It all came out the day before the one fixed for the expedition.
+His Highness, being in great spirits, had ordered a shooting
+competition, and the men were served from the new stores supplied
+to the State of Chita by Petroff Gortschakin of St. Petersburg.
+The Maharajah drove out to the ranges to look on, and all his
+Ministers with him.  All, that is, except the Minister of the
+Treasury, who begged to be excused; he was so very unwell.
+
+Some of the men knelt and clicked and reloaded half a dozen times
+before they could fire; some were luckier, and fired the first time
+or the third without reloading.  They glanced suspiciously at one
+another and hesitated, while there grew a shining heap of
+unexploded cartridges, a foot high, under the Maharajah's very
+nose.  His Highness looked on stupefied for ten minutes, then burst
+into blazing wrath.  Maun Rao rode madly about examining,
+inquiring, threatening.
+
+'Our cartridges are filled with powdered charcoal,' he cried,
+smiting one of them between two stones to prove his words.  There
+was an unexpected noise, and the noble General jumped into the air,
+bereft of the largest half of his curled moustache.  That one was
+not.  Then they all went furiously back to the palace.  The only
+other incident of that day which it is worth our while to chronicle
+is connected with Surji Rao and the big shoe.  The big shoe was
+administered to Surji Rao by a man of low caste, in presence of the
+entire court and as many of the people of Lalpore as chose to come
+and look on.  It was very thoroughly administered, and afterwards
+Surji Rao was put formally outside the city gates, and told that
+the king desired never to look upon his black face again.  Which
+was rubbing it in rather unfairly, as His Highness's own complexion
+was precisely the same shade.  With great promptitude Surji Rao
+took the road to meet the English and sell his information, but
+this possibility occurred to the Maharajah soon enough to send men
+after him to frustrate it.
+
+'There shall be at least enough sound cartridges in his bargain for
+that,' said His Highness grimly.
+
+The Chitan spirit did not flourish quite so vaingloriously at the
+council that night, and there was no more talk about the sky
+falling upon dauntless Chitan heads.  The sky had fallen, and the
+effect was rather quenching than otherwise.  The previous stores
+were counted over, and it was found that the men could not be
+served with three rounds apiece out of them.  When this was
+announced, nobody thought of doubting the wisdom of the Maharajah's
+decision to shut up the gates of the city, and trust to the
+improbability of the English venturing to attack him in such small
+numbers, not knowing his resources.  So that very night, lest any
+word should go abroad of the strait of the warriors of Chita, the
+gates were shut.  But all the city knew.  Moti knew.  Sunni knew.
+
+Two days later, Moti and Sunni heard the English bugles half a mile
+away.  They were playing 'Weel may the keel row!' the regimental
+march-past, as Colonel Starr's Midlanders did the last half mile to
+their camping-ground.  The boys were in the courtyard among the
+horses, and Sunni dropped the new silver bit he was looking at,
+held up his head, and listened.  He was the same yellow-haired,
+blue-eyed Sunni, considerably tanned by the fierce winds of
+Rajputana; but there came a brightness over his face as he
+listened, that had not been there since he was a very little boy.
+
+'How beautiful the music is!' said he to Moti.
+
+Moti put his fingers in his ears.
+
+'It is horrible,' he cried.  'It screams and it rushes.  How can
+they be able to make it?  I shall tell my father to have it
+stopped.'
+
+Presently the bugles stopped of themselves, and Moti forgot about
+them, but the brightness did not go out of Sunni's face, and all
+day long he went about humming the air of 'Weel may the keel row,'
+with such variations as might be expected.  He grew very thoughtful
+toward evening, but his eyes shone brighter than any sapphires in
+the Maharajah's iron boxes.  As to an old Mahomedan woman from
+Rubbulgurh, who cooked her chupatties alone and somewhat despised,
+she heard the march-past too, and was troubled all day long with
+the foolish idea that the captain-sahib would presently come in to
+tea, and would ask her, Tooni, where the memsahib was.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+
+
+
+Sunni had his own room in the palace, a little square place with a
+high white wall and a table and chair in it, which Dr. Roberts had
+given him.  The table held his books, his pen and ink and paper.
+There was a charpoy in one corner, and under the charpoy a locked
+box.  There were no windows, and the narrow door opened into a
+passage that ran abruptly into a wall, a few feet farther on.
+So nobody saw Sunni when he carried his chirag, his little
+chimneyless, smoking tin lamp, into his room, and set it in a niche
+on the wall, took off his shoes, and threw himself down on his
+charpoy at eleven o'clock that night.  For a long time he had been
+listening to the bul-buls, the nightingales, in the garden, and
+thinking of this moment.  Now it had come, and Sunni quivered and
+throbbed all over with excitement.  He lay very still, though, on
+the watch for footsteps, whispers, breathings in the passage.  Four
+years in the palace had taught Sunni what these things meant.  He
+lay still for more than two hours.
+
+At last, very quietly, Sunni lifted himself up by his elbows, put
+first one leg, and then the other, out of the charpoy, and got up.
+More quietly still he drew the locked box from under the bed, took
+a key from his pocket, and opened it.  The key squeaked in the
+wood, and Sunni paused again for a long time, listening.  Then in
+the smoky, uncertain light of the chirag flaring in the niche, he
+took from the box three gold bangles, two broken armlets, enamelled
+in red and blue, and a necklace of pearls with green enamelled
+pendants.  Last, he drew out a little sword with rubies set in the
+hilt.  For an instant Sunni hesitated; the ornaments were nothing,
+but the sword was his chief possession and his pride.  It would be
+so easy to carry away!  He looked at it lovingly for a minute, and
+laid it with the rest.  All these things were his very own, but
+something told him that he must not take them away.  Then he took
+the long coarse white turban cloth from his head, and wrapped
+everything skilfully in it.  Nothing jangled, and when the parcel
+was made up it was flat and even.  Then Sunni, with his English
+pen, printed in Urdu:
+
+
+[Urdu text]
+
+
+which in English letters would have been spelled 'Maharajah ka
+wasti,' and which meant simply, 'For the Maharajah,' upon one side
+of it.  Upon the other he wrote in the large round hand that Dr.
+Roberts had taught him--
+
+'To your Honner, the Maharajah of Chita.  Sunni will take your
+Honner in his hart to his oun country, but the gifs are too
+heavie.'
+
+Sunni had certainly learned politeness at last among the Rajputs.
+Then he put the parcel back into the box, softly locked it, and
+laid the key on the cover.
+
+Still nobody came his way.  Sunni took another turban cloth from
+its nail in the wall, a finely-woven turban cloth, with blue and
+gold stripes, nine yards long, for festivals.  He twisted it
+carelessly round his neck, and blew out the chirag.  Then he
+slipped softly into the passage, and from that into the close,
+dark, high-walled corridors that led into the outer courts.  He
+stepped quickly, but carefully; the corridors were full of sleeping
+servants.  Twice he passed a sentinel.  The first was stupid with
+opium, and did not notice him.  Mar Singh, the second, was very
+wide awake.
+
+'Where go you, Sunni-ji?' he asked, inquisitively.
+
+'I go to speak with Tooni about a matter which troubles me so that
+I cannot sleep,' answered Sunni; 'and afterwards I return to the
+little south balcony that overlooks the river; it will be cooler
+there if the wind blows.'
+
+As Sunni went on, the thoughts of the sentinel became immediately
+fixed upon the necessity of being awake when the sahib's son should
+pass in again--the sahib's son had the ear of the Maharajah.
+
+The ayah's hut was in the very farthest corner of the courtyard she
+had begged for, somewhat apart from the others.  It was quite dark
+inside when Sunni pushed open the door, but the old woman,
+slumbering light, started up from her charpoy with a little cry.
+
+'Choop!' said he in a low, quick tone; and Tooni, recognising his
+voice, was instantly silent.
+
+Sunni made his way to the side of the bed, and took one of her
+hands.
+
+'Listen, Tooni,' said he, in the same tone, 'I am come for what is
+mine.  Give it to me.'
+
+'Sonny Sahib!' quavered the old woman hoarsely, 'what have I to
+give you?  Dil kushi,[1] I have nothing.'
+
+
+[1] 'Heart's delight.'
+
+
+'What from fear you have never given up, nor burnt, nor thrown
+away,' said Sunni, firmly; 'what you said false words to ee-Wobbis
+about, when you told him it had been stolen from you.  My little
+black book, with my God in it.'
+
+'Hazur!  I have it not.'
+
+'Give it to me,' said Sunni.
+
+The old woman raised herself in the bed.  'A sahib's promise is
+written in gold,' said she; 'promise that the Maharajah shall never
+know.'
+
+'He shall never know,' said Sunni.
+
+Tooni felt her way to the side of the hut; then her hand fumbled
+along the top of the wall; it seemed to Sunni for an interminable
+time.  At a certain place she parted the thatch and put her hand
+into it with a little rustling that Sunni thought might be heard in
+the very heart of the palace.  Then she drew out a small, tight
+sewn, oilskin bag, that had taken the shape of the book inside it,
+groped across the hut again, and gave it to Sunni.  The boy's hand
+trembled as he took it, and without a word he slipped into the
+darkness outside.
+
+Then he stopped short and went back.  'Great thanks to you, Tooni-
+ji,' he said softly into the darkness of the hut.  'When I find my
+own country I will come back and take you there too.  And while I
+am gone Moti will love you, Tooni-ji.  Peace be to you!'
+
+Mar Singh was still awake when Sunni re-entered the palace.  The
+wind had come, he said.  Sleep would rest upon the eyelids of
+Sunni-ji in the south balcony.
+
+It was a curious little place, the south balcony, really not a
+balcony at all, but a round-pillared pavilion with a roof that
+jutted out above the city wall.  It hung over a garden too, rather
+a cramped garden, the wall and the river came so close, and one
+that had been left a good deal to take care of itself.  Some fine
+pipal-trees grew in it though, one of them towered within three
+feet of the balcony, while the lower branches overspread the city
+wall.  All day long the green parrakeets flashed in and out of the
+pipal-trees, screaming and chattering, while the river wound blue
+among the yellow sands outside the wall; but to-night the only
+sound in them was the whispering of the leaves as the south wind
+passed, and both the river and the sands lay silver gray in the
+starlight.  Sunni, lying full length upon the balcony, listened
+with all his might.  From the courtyard, away round to the right
+where the stables were, came a pony's neigh, and Sunni, as he heard
+it once--twice--thrice--felt his eyes fill with tears.  It was the
+voice of his pony, of his 'Dhooplal,' his 'red sunlight,' and, he
+would never ride Dhooplal again.  The south breeze brought no other
+sound, the palace stretched on either side of him dark and still, a
+sweet heavy fragrance from a frangipanni-tree in the garden floated
+up, and that was all.  Sunni looked across the river, and saw that
+a group of palms on the other side was beginning to stand
+distinctly against the sky.  Then he remembered that he must make
+haste.
+
+The first thing he did was to unwind his long turban from his neck,
+and cut it in two.  Two-thirds he twisted round his waist, the
+other he made fast to one of the little red stone pillars of the
+balcony.  It hung straight and black down into the shadows of the
+pipal-tree.  Then, very gradually and cautiously, Sunni slipped
+over the balcony's edge and let himself down, down, till he reached
+a branch thick enough to cling to.  The turban was none too long,
+the branches at the top were so slender.  Just as he grasped a
+thick one, clutching it with both arms and legs, and swaying
+desperately in the dark, he felt a rush of wings across his face,
+and a great white owl flew out hooting in her panic.  The boy
+almost missed his catch with fear, and the Maharajah, wakeful in
+his apartments, lost another good hour's sleep through hearing the
+owl's cry.  It was the worst of omens, the Maharajah believed, and
+sometimes he believed it with less reason.
+
+As quickly as he dared, Sunni let himself down branch by branch
+till he reached the level of the wall.  Presently he stood upon it
+in the subsiding rustle of the leaves, breathless and trembling..
+He seemed to have disturbed every living thing within a hundred
+yards.  A score of bats flew up from the wall crevices, a flying
+fox struck him on the shoulder, at his feet something black and
+slender twisted away into a darker place.  Sunni stood absolutely
+still, gradually letting go his hold upon the pipal twigs.
+Presently everything was as it had been before, except for the
+little dark motionless figure on the wall; and the south wind was
+bringing across the long, shrill, mournful howls of the jackals
+that plundered the refuse of the British camp half a mile away.
+
+Then Sunni lay down flat on the top of the wall, and began to work
+himself with his hands and feet towards the nearest embrasure.  An
+old cannon stood in this, and threatened with its wide black mouth
+any foe that should be foolish enough to think of attacking the
+fort from the river.  This venerable piece of ammunition had not
+been fired for ten years, and would burst to a certainty if it were
+fired now; but as nobody had ever dreamed of attacking Lalpore from
+the river that didn't particularly matter.  When Sunni reached it,
+he crouched down in its shadow--the grayness behind the palms was
+spreading--and took the rest of his turban cloth from his waist.
+Then he took off his coat, and began to unwind a rope from his
+body--a rope made up of all sorts of ends, thick and thin, long and
+short, and pieced out with leather thongs.  Sunni was considerably
+more comfortable when he had divested himself of it.  He tied the
+rope and the turban cloth together, and fastened the rope end to
+the old gun's wheel.  He looked over for a second--no longer--but
+it was too dark to tell how far down the face of the thirty-foot
+wall his ragged contrivance hung.  It was too dark as well to see
+whether the water rippled against the wall or not; but Sunni knew
+that the river was low.  As a matter of fact he had only about five
+feet to drop, and he went very comfortably into a thick bed of wet
+sand.  Nor was anything known of his going in Lalpore until
+daybreak, when one of the palace sweepers found the end of a blue
+and gold turban flapping about the south balcony; and Moti, who
+often went early to tell his dreams to Sunni, brought the Maharajah
+a parcel.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+
+
+
+'What's this?' said Colonel Starr, looking up from his camp table,
+where he was writing a final message for translation to the
+Maharajah.  The sun was on the point of rising, the air was crisp,
+and the sky was splendid.  Lalpore, on her buttressed slope, sat as
+proud and as silent as ever; but something like a blue ribbon
+floated from the south wall over the river.
+
+'What's this?' said Colonel Starr, with the deepest possible
+astonishment.
+
+'Pris'ner, sir,' answered Thomas Jones, saluting.
+
+'WHAT?' said the Colonel.  'Nonsense!  Where did you get him?'
+
+'Beg pardon, sir.  Peters were on duty, sir, at the second outpost,
+sir.  It were about two hours ago as far as I could judge, sir, not
+'avin' the time by me.  Peters seed pris'ner a-comin' strite fer
+the camp across the sands from the river, sir.  Peters sings out
+"Oo goes?" H'AND there been no notiss took, pints, sir.'
+
+'Yes,' interposed Sunni, composedly, in his best English, 'he did.
+But he did not fire.  And that was well, for he might have hit me.
+I am not broken.'
+
+'Go on, Jones,' said the Colonel.  'This is very queer.'
+
+'Pris'ner were about ten yards off, sir, 'an, as 'e says, Peters
+MIGHT 'a hit 'im,' said Sergeant Jones, with solemn humour, 'but
+afore he'd made up 'is mind to fire, 'e'd come so close Peters saw
+'ow small he was, an' therefore didn't, sir.'
+
+'Quite right,' remarked Sunni.  'Peters might have killed me.'
+
+The Colonel nodded.  He was looking with absorbed interest into
+Sunni's eyes.  He came out of his instant of abstraction with a
+start, while Jones went on with respectful volubility.
+
+'Beggin' pardon, sir, Peters says as 'ow 'e were all struck of a
+heap, sir, at 'earin' the young 'un call out in English, sir, an'
+bein' so light complected fer a native, sir, an' even lighter in
+that light, Peters didn't rightly know wot 'e might be firin' at,
+sir.  Peters do be a bit superstitious.'
+
+'Peters took him then, I suppose?'  The Colonel smiled ironically.
+
+'Beggin' YOUR pardon, sir, it was rather 'im as took Peters.  'E
+walked strite up to 'im, an' "Ware is the burra[1] sahib?" says 'e.
+Peters sends 'im into the guard tent to me as 'e passed on his
+beat, and pris'ner says "YOU ain't the burra sahib," says he.  Then
+I says to pris'ner, "You bito[2] an' give an account of yerself,"
+says I.  Says 'e quite 'aughty like, "I'll account fer myself to
+the burra sahib," an' wouldn't take no chaff.  But 'e bitoes, an'
+curls 'isself up in the sand, an' goes sound asleep in no time--an'
+'ere 'e is, sir.'
+
+
+[1] 'Principal.'
+
+[2] 'Sit down on the ground.'
+
+
+'Also,' corrected Sunni, 'he gave me some coffee.  He is a good
+man.  Are you the burra sahib?' he asked the Colonel.
+
+But Colonel Starr was not in a mood to answer questions regarding
+his dignity.  He looked at the queer slender figure before him, in
+its torn coat of embroidered silk, and its narrow, shapeless, dirty
+cotton trousers; and especially he looked at the boy's hair and
+eyes--his wavy yellow hair and his blue eyes.
+
+'You are not a Rajput, you are an English boy,' he said finally,
+with amazed conviction.
+
+At another time the Colonel would have been wild with excitement at
+such a discovery, but for the moment his mind was full of graver
+things.  In an hour he meant to attack Lalpore.  He dismissed his
+kindling enthusiasm, and added simply, 'How came you here?'
+
+'I came by a rope from the palace to the pipal-tree, and thence to
+the south wall, and thence to the river bed.  It was not hard.
+Knowing the shallows of the river, I arrived quite easily by
+wading.'
+
+'You come from the fort?  Are there any other English there?'  The
+Colonel's voice was quick and eager.
+
+'Not even one!  Ee-Wobbis was there, but he is killed.'
+
+'Ah!' said Colonel Starr.  'When was he killed?'
+
+'In the evening on the tenth day of the month.  I do not properly
+know for why.  It was not the Maharajah,' added Sunni quickly; 'it
+was Maun Rao.  Ee-Wobbis was my countryman, and I hate Maun Rao.'
+
+The orderly came for the final message that was to be sent to the
+Maharajah.  Colonel Starr told him it would be ready in half an
+hour.
+
+'Have they given you any breakfast?' he asked.
+
+'No, thank you--not yet,' answered Sunni politely.
+
+The Colonel wrote an order, and gave it to Thomas Jones.  'Be
+smart,' he added.
+
+Until Thomas Jones returned with some bread and bacon and a bowl of
+milk, and until Sunni had eaten the bread and drunk the milk, the
+Colonel looked at the boy as seldom as he could, and said only two
+words.  'No bacon?' he asked.
+
+Sunni flushed.  'If it is excusable,' said he, 'I do not eat of the
+pig.'
+
+At which Colonel Starr's face expressed curiosity, amusement, and
+interest all at once; but he kept silence until Sunni had finished.
+'Now,' said he pleasantly, 'listen, my small prisoner.  I am sure
+you have a great deal to tell me about yourself.  Very good, I will
+hear it.  I should like to hear it.  But not now--there is no time.
+Since you have taken the trouble to escape from this place, you do
+not want to go back again, I suppose?'
+
+'I want to go to my own country--with you,' said Sunni.  'I can
+march.'
+
+The Colonel smiled.  It was the smile of a brave man, and kindly.
+His men knew it as well as they knew his sterner looks.  Sunni
+thought it a beautiful smile.
+
+'You shall go,' he said, 'but we are not quite ready to start yet.
+Perhaps in a few days, perhaps in a few weeks, we shall be.  A good
+deal depends on what you can tell me.'
+
+Sunni looked straight into the Colonel's eyes, a little puzzled.
+
+'How do they get water in Lalpore?' asked the Colonel, to begin
+with.
+
+'There are four wells,' said Sunni, 'and two of them have no
+bottom.'
+
+'H'm!  And what is that white building with the round roof that we
+see from here?'
+
+'That is the mosque of Larulla,' said Sunni, 'but it is no longer
+of consequence; there is so little Mussulmans in Lalpore.  The
+soldiers hang their guns there now.'
+
+'Ah!  And has the Maharajah many soldiers, and have they good guns--
+new guns?'
+
+Sunni looked into the Colonel's face with eager pleasure to reply;
+but there he saw something that made him suddenly close his lips.
+He had not lived ten years among the Rajputs without learning to
+read faces, and in Colonel Starr's he saw that all this talk the
+Colonel desired about Lalpore was not for Lalpore's good.  The boy
+thought for a minute, and tightened his lips, while a little firm
+line came on each side of his mouth.  He only opened them to say,
+'Burra sahib, I cannot tell you that.'
+
+'But you must tell me,' said Colonel Starr firmly.
+
+'No,' returned Sunni, 'not that, nor any more informations about
+the fort.'
+
+The Colonel's face grew stern.  He was not accustomed to
+disobedience.
+
+'Come,' he said; 'out with it, boy.  I have no time to waste.'  His
+tone was so serious that Sunni felt a little nervous thrill run all
+over him.
+
+'No,' said he.
+
+The Colonel tried another way:
+
+'Come, my little chap,' said he gently, 'you are English, are you
+not?'
+
+Sunni nodded.
+
+Then you must serve the English Queen.  She has sent me here to
+punish the Maharajah for killing the padre-sahib.  You must help
+me.'
+
+'The Maharajah DID NOT kill ee-Wobbis,' cried Sunni excitedly.  'I
+have already once said that.  The Maharajah he LIKE ee-Wobbis.  I
+am English, but the Maharajah is my father and my mother.  I cannot
+speak against the Maharajah, burra sahib.'
+
+There came a light into the Colonel's eyes which was not kindled by
+anger.  He found himself liking this slip of a ragged urchin with
+fair hair, who defied him--liking him tremendously.  But the crisis
+was grave; he could not sacrifice his men to a child's scruple; he
+could not let himself be defied.  He took out his watch, and made
+his face hard.
+
+'Then,' said he coldly, 'you are either the Maharajah's deserter or
+his spy.  If you have deserted, I am disposed to send you back to
+him, since you are of no use to us.  If you are his spy, it is my
+duty to have you shot.  I will give you five minutes to save your
+skin in.'
+
+'But--but you are my COUNTRYMAN, burra sahib!'  There was a sob in
+his voice.
+
+The only possible answer to that was a hug, so it went unanswered.
+Colonel Starr set himself to think of his Midlanders.
+
+Sunni lifted his blue eyes entreatingly to the Colonel's face, but
+he had turned it away.  He was watching a little brown lizard
+sunning itself outside the tent door, and wondering how long he
+could keep his disciplinary expression.  You could hear nothing in
+the tent but the ticking of the watch.  Sunni looked down at the
+lizard too, and so the minutes passed.
+
+Three of them passed.  Colonel Starr found himself hoping even more
+that the boy should stand firm than that he should speak.  Colonel
+Starr began to say softly within himself, 'I am a brute.'  The
+fifth minute was up.  'Will you speak?' asked the Colonel.
+
+'Burra sahib, no,' said Sunni.
+
+At that instant Lieutenant Pink galloped up to the door of the
+tent.
+
+'They've come to their senses at last, sir.  Six mounted men have
+just left the north gate, signalling for a parley.'
+
+The Colonel jumped to his feet and gave half a dozen orders without
+stopping.  The last one was to Sunni.  'Stay here,' he said; 'you
+shall soon go back to your own country.'
+
+The Chitan horsemen had ridden out to announce the coming of the
+Maharajah, so that the English officer might meet him half-way.
+They gave the message gravely, and rode slowly back.  Half an hour
+later there arose a great shouting and blowing of trumpets inside
+the walls, the royal gate was flung open, and the Maharajah
+appeared, swaying in a blaze of silk and jewels upon an enormous
+elephant with a painted trunk and trappings fringed in gold and
+silver.  Trumpeters and the crimson flag of Chita went before him;
+Maun Rao and the other generals rode behind him; at his side sat
+his bard, his poet laureate, with glowing eyes, speaking constantly
+into his royal ear the glorious annals of his house.  Colonel Starr
+and his little suite met this wonderful cavalcade a quarter of a
+mile from the city, and the Maharajah and the Colonel dismounted.
+Whereupon the magnificent Rajput, in his diamond aigrettes and his
+silken swathings, and the broad shouldered British officer, in his
+Queen's red coat, solemnly kissed each other.  They exchanged other
+politenesses, spoke of the health of the Viceroy and of his 'good
+friend' the Maharajah, and His Highness arranged a durbar to be
+held in his hall of audience at two that afternoon, when he would
+hear the desires of the British Raj.
+
+Strangely enough, it occurred to nobody to wonder why the Maharajah
+had so suddenly changed his mind.  To nobody, that is, except Sonny
+Sahib.  He guessed the reason, and sitting all morning in a corner
+of the Colonel's tent, as he had been told, he thought about it
+very seriously.  Once or twice he had to swallow a lump in his
+throat to help him to think.  The Maharajah's reason was that he
+supposed that Sonny Sahib had told the English about Lalpore's
+ammunition; and that, under the circumstances, was enough to bring
+lumps into anybody's throat.
+
+The Colonel was very busy, and took no notice of him, except to say
+that he should have some dinner.  He heard talk of the Maharajah's
+visit and of the durbar, and he revolved that too.  When the time
+came, Sunni had concluded that he also must go to the durbar.  He
+said so to Colonel Starr.
+
+'Nonsense!' said the Colonel.  'And yet,' he added reflectively,
+'it might be useful to have you there.  I daresay you will be safe
+enough.  You are not afraid?'
+
+Sunni said he was not afraid.  So they all went, and the Maharajah,
+rising from his ivory chair, received them with much state and
+ceremony.  He frowned when he saw Sunni, but said nothing.  His
+Highness felt that he was not in a position to resent anything, and
+thought bitterly of Petroff Gortschakin.
+
+The durbar proceeded.  Formally, and according to strict
+precedence, each man spoke.  With great amiability Colonel Starr
+presented the demands of the English Government; with greater
+amiability the Maharajah and his officers repelled them.  But
+Colonel Starr was firm, and he had the unanswerable argument of
+three hundred well-armed men and two nine-pounders, which Maun Rao
+would have to meet with Petroff Gortschakin's cartridges.  After
+duly and sadly reflecting upon this, the Maharajah concluded that
+he would give up ee-Wobbis's murderers--one of them at any rate--
+and let himself be arranged, at all events for the present.
+Afterwards he would say to Maun Rao that it was only for the
+present.  He summoned all his politeness to his aid, and said in
+the end that such was his admiration for the English Lord Sahib in
+Calcutta, such his friendship and respect, that he would welcome
+any one who came to Lalpore in his name.
+
+'Accompanied by a small force,' added Colonel Starr in the
+vernacular, and the Maharajah also added, while Maun Rao behind him
+ground his teeth, 'Accompanied by a small force.'
+
+'One word more,' said the Maharajah, 'and the durbar is ended.  The
+opium pledge will appear, and we will drink it with you.  From the
+palm of your hand I will drink, and from the palm of my hand you
+shall drink; but the lips of the boy who comes with you shall not
+taste it.  The Rajputs do not drink opium with their betrayers.'
+
+Sunni heard, and his face grew crimson.
+
+'Maharajah!' he shouted, 'I did not tell; I did not tell.'
+
+The Maharajah shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.
+
+'He is not of our blood; why should he have kept silence?' said the
+old man.
+
+'But he did keep silence,' said the Colonel, looking straight into
+the Chitan's sunken eyes.  'I asked him about your men and your
+ammunition.  I commanded him, I threatened him.  I give you my word
+of honour as a soldier that he would say nothing.'
+
+The English in India are always believed.  A cry went up from the
+other Chitans.  Moti clapped his hands together, Maun Rao caught
+the boy up and kissed him.
+
+'Then,' said the Maharajah slowly, 'I love you still, Sunni, and
+you shall drink the opium with the rest.  Your son,' he added to
+Colonel Starr, 'will bring praise to his father.'
+
+The Colonel smiled.  'I have no children,' said he.  'I wish he
+were indeed my son.'
+
+'If he is not your son,' asked the Maharajah cunningly, 'why did
+you bring him to the durbar?'
+
+'Because he wished to come--'
+
+'To say that I did not tell,' said Sunni.
+
+'Call the woman,' ordered His Highness.
+
+She was in the crowd in the courtyard, waiting to see her old
+master pass again.  She came in bent and shaking, with her head-
+covering over her face.  She threw herself at Colonel Starr's feet,
+and kissed them.
+
+'Captan Sahib!' she quavered, 'Captan Sahib!  Mirbani do!'[1]
+
+
+[1] 'Give mercy.'
+
+
+There was absolute silence in the audience hall.  A parrakeet
+flashed through it screaming.  The shadows were creeping east over
+the marble floor; a little sun flamed out on the hilt of Maun Rao's
+sword.  The Colonel stooped over the old woman and raised her up.
+His face whitened as he looked at her.
+
+'It's Tooni!' he said, hoarsely.  And then, in a changed voice,
+unconscious of the time and place, 'Tooni, what happened to the
+memsahib?' he asked.
+
+The ayah burst into an incoherent torrent of words and tears.  The
+memsahib was very, very ill, she said.  There were not five breaths
+left in her body.  The memsahib had gone in the cart--and the chota
+baba[1]--the Sonny Sahib--had always had good milk--and she had
+taken none of the memsahib's ornaments, only her little black book
+with the charm in it
+
+
+[1] 'The little baby.'
+
+
+'That is true talk,' interposed Sunni, 'Tooni's words are all true.
+Here is the little black book.'
+
+Colonel Starr had the face of a man in a dream, half conscious and
+trying to wake up.  His lips worked as he took the oilskin bag from
+Sunni, and he looked at it helplessly.  Little Lieutenant Pink took
+it gently from him, slit it down the side with a pocket-knife, and
+put back into the Colonel's hand the small leather-bound book.  On
+the back of it was printed, in tarnished gold letters, 'Common
+Prayer.'
+
+It was a very little book, but the Colonel was obliged to hold it
+with both hands.  Even then they trembled so that he could hardly
+turn to the fly-leaf.  His eyes filled as he read there, 'Evelyn
+Starr from John Starr, December 5th, 1855,' and remembered when he
+had written that.  Still the shadows crept eastward, the mynas
+chattered in the garden, the scent of the roses came across warm in
+the sun.  The Rajputs looked at him curiously, but no one spoke.
+
+The Colonel's eyes were fixed upon Sunni's face.  He made one or
+two efforts to speak that did not succeed.  Then 'And this is the
+baby,' he said.
+
+'Hazur, ha!'[1] replied Tooni, 'Sonny Sahib hai!'
+
+
+[1] 'Your Honour, yes.  It is Sonny Sahib.'
+
+
+The Colonel looked at Sunni an instant longer, and the boy smiled
+into his face.  'Yes,' said he assuredly, with a deep breath, 'it
+is Sonny Sahib.'
+
+'The woman saw your honour this morning, and the khaber was brought
+to me then,' remarked the Maharajah complacently.
+
+It was three weeks, after all, before the Maharajah of Chita was
+satisfactorily arranged.  For three weeks Thomas Jones indulged in
+roast kid and curry every day from Lalpore, and Lieutenant Pink,
+having no more warlike way of amusing himself, made sanguinary
+water-colour sketches of the city to send home to the Misses Pink
+in England.  The day came at last when Colonel Starr and Sonny
+Sahib went to pay their final respects to the Maharajah.  With his
+hand upon his son's shoulder the Colonel turned once more after the
+last courtesy had been exchanged.
+
+'Your Highness will remember,' said the English soldier for the
+pleasure of saying it, 'he did not tell.'
+
+THE END
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Story of Sonny Sahib
+by Mrs. Everard Cotes
+
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