“I will carry them all off with me to the mango grove; but I must introduce a few of my boys to you first.—Kripá Dé, Bál Singh, make your saláms to the lady.”
They did so respectfully and with natural grace. Alicia was puzzled how to return the politeness, for she had had no intercourse with natives, except her servants.
“I see that your breakfast is just ready, my love,” said Harold. “Call for anything that you want; Mangal acts as khitmatgar [table-servant] as well as cook.”
“But surely you are going to take breakfast with me!” cried Alicia. “I am not to eat alone, and on the first morning here!”
“Forgive me, darling, for hurrying away. I do not know when I shall be able to overtake all the work which I find before me.”
“But you must eat breakfast,” began Alicia.
“I took mine hours ago with my father. I only waited to see you, and look after your little comforts. Indeed I must go,” continued Harold, vexed to see moisture rising to the eyes of his wife. “I have left my burden too long on the shoulders of others. You know that a missionary’s time is not his own;” and in another minute he was off.
“So I am not to have the society of my own husband, or have him always surrounded by natives!” murmured Alicia, as she sat down disconsolately to her solitary meal. “It is rather hard—but no! I must remember Harold’s words, that nothing is hard which is right. And missionaries should have submissive wills.”
Alicia gave a little sigh. Her eyes were opening to the fact that to be a good wife to a devoted worker like Harold would require some amount of self-denial. Time was already beginning to show to the bride that she needed a great deal of training to be fit for the position which she had lately thought the most enviable in the world. The conclusion at which Alicia arrived, as she rather pensively ate her suji, was that she must in future make her appearance a good deal earlier than ten o’clock in the morning.
“Already my folly and self-will have involved Harold in trouble,” Alicia said to herself. “If I had taken his advice, I should have waited patiently in the gári till the nat-kat’s temper was subdued, and should not have added the weight of ourselves and our luggage to an already overladen cart. Had I behaved like a sensible woman and not like a silly child, the cart might never have stuck in the mud nor the wheel come off.”