"I go to the bazaar myself," said Mrs. Beard somewhat irrelevantly, "and do my own marketing."
"Ah! but of course your servants are Christians," argued Mrs. Piggott, covert contempt in her tone, "and we all know what that means!"
Mrs. Beard reddened. "Which shows how lamentably ignorant you all are," she retorted. "You think that because a native is a Christian that he must be a rogue. I admit that he generally is a rogue to start with, but not because he is a Christian. It is because, unfortunately, our converts are mostly drawn from a class that has nothing to lose by embracing the true religion, people who are outcasts by birth, cut off from all spiritual advantages, oppressed and despised, jungle folk, gypsies, many of them thieves by profession, and such like. So far we have hardly tapped the better born classes, and whenever we do it is a real triumph, for they have everything to lose from a worldly point of view. But we know we must begin from the bottom and work upwards, and already great progress has been made, though it is necessarily slow, and the fight is often disheartening...."
Stella looked at the faded, dowdy little woman with a new interest. Mrs. Beard and her husband were working for India, doing great work, just as great in its way as the Carringtons had done in the past, and as their kind were doing in the present. She wished she could help the Beards by engaging a whole staff of Christian converts as servants! But so far she was powerless, there was nothing she could do; and as the atmosphere had become slightly uncomfortable she was about to try and change the subject when, to her relief, a diversion was caused by Mrs. Beard's discovery that her offspring were disporting themselves behind the mango tree with some native children, though, surely, according to Mission theories, Mrs. Beard should have felt no displeasure?
"Martha, Mary, Deborah!" she called sternly, "come here at once!"
This summons was not obeyed, but apparently it caused an animated argument between the padre's children and their Oriental playmates. Again Mrs. Beard raised a voice of command, and presently Martha and Mary and Deborah emerged from the shelter of the tree, escorting a small brown boy attired in a red cotton garment and an embroidered skull cap.
"Mother," shouted the three little girls in chorus, "this dear boy wants to come to our school. We will make him a Christian, mayn't we?"
To their mortified astonishment this praiseworthy plan did not meet with the encouragement it deserved. The Commissioner's head servant pounced on the red-coated pagan and took him, howling loudly, from his friends.
Stella rose. "Sher Singh!" she called angrily, "let the child alone!" Of course, the man heard her order, must have known, though perforce she had spoken in English, what she wished him to do; but he paid no attention, just bore the child, kicking and screaming, towards the servants' quarters.
Martha and Mary and Deborah ran to their mother and buried their faces in her skirt. Stella looked round for Robert; he was drinking a whisky and soda, regardless of the scene. Mrs. Cuthell laid a restraining hand on her arm. "It's quite right, Mrs. Crayfield," she said with reassuring inflection. "The servants' children must be kept in the background, otherwise they would swarm all over the place."