When the time came for him to fulfil the engagement for the following afternoon he was surprised to realise how eagerly he had looked forward to it. Work and anxiety had slackened a little with the arrival of fresh supplies, and he felt almost light-hearted as he bathed and got into clean flannels; for the first time since he had left Rassih he caught himself singing in his bath. He walked the good half-mile that lay between his own encampment and that of the Zenana Mission lady, Jacob at his heels, well groomed like his master; they were a good-looking English pair.
Miss Baker was outside the living tent photographing Laban, the native Bible teacher, who posed in mingled pride and uneasiness—proud to be taken in his black alpaca coat and pork-pie cap, a shiny-bound Testament in one hand, a bulging umbrella in the other; uneasy because deep down in his mind, for all his enlightenment, there lurked the same fear that had brought about the flight of the famine wallahs.
"One minute," Miss Baker called out to the approaching visitor; a click, and she raised her head triumphantly. "Thank you, Mr. Laban. That ought to be very good. You shall have some copies to send to your home, and I'll put your picture in my book."
"Mr. Laban" salaamed, and withdrew hurriedly. Then it was Flint's turn. He submitted while Miss Baker took him seated, standing, with Jacob, without Jacob; she fetched a larger camera from her own tent, and talked of head-and-shoulders, profile, full, and three-quarter face portraits. She commanded him to take off his hat.
"But I shall get sunstroke, and you would have to nurse me," he quibbled, rather bored with the performance, though Miss Baker's engrossment amused him, and she was a pleasant vision in her blue linen frock, a bright flush on her cheeks, her ruddy hair curling about her neck and ears and forehead beneath what might have been a boy's straw hat.
"Oh! Miss Abigail would do that!" she assured him. "I hate nursing. I know nothing about it. Come into the shade of the trees behind the tents."
The little camp was pitched close to a couple of mango trees, probably the sole survivors of a once flourishing grove, but as the space surrounding their trunks had been appropriated by the servants as an open-air kitchen, shared by the shigram bullocks, a goat and her kids, a collection of fowls, and a few sprawling children, Flint hesitated, compromised.
"Why not the big peepul tree further back?" he suggested.
The tree in question stood solitary and majestic between the camp and the adjacent village, a landmark in the wide flatness, mightier, far more ancient than the mango trees. No doubt it had once shaded a temple long since ruined and decayed.