An hour or more passed by. The firing outside had ceased. Nothing could be heard but the pacing of the sentinels and the chowkedars crying out one to the other. Darkness had fallen; but the little company in the tent did not stir. Then Maud, crying out that she could stand it no longer, lighted a lamp; Trixy, who was very much ashamed of her little outburst, asked for a book, and Lady Elton fell back upon her never-failing resource—the silk stockings she was knitting for the General. 'Do you think, dears,' she said to the two youngest girls, Lucy and Mildred, 'that you could sing one of your duets? If father did come home to-night, it would please him to hear your voices.' They said they would try, and in a few moments their sweet clear young voices rose above the stillness. It was one of the sentimental ditties that we used to admire in those days, neither the words of the song nor the music to which it was set of a particularly high order; but as, supported by his young friend, the old General approached the lighted tent, and heard in his girls' sweet voices of wild waves whispering and red roses fading away, his heart thrilled with a rapture such as no artistic music could have given. 'Bless them,' he said, in a low and heartfelt voice. 'All right, isn't it, Bertie? They couldn't sing like that if the shock had been too much for them. There! what an old donkey I am! I knew the children had the pluck of—Come on, Bertie. They are stopping. They hear us. Back, Yaseen Khan, you old fool! I don't want you to announce me.'
And now the curtain before the tent is thrown aside, and he sees them—his sweet wife and the children, who are dearer to him than his life, and his stern eyes fill with tears, and the voice of thunder, which only a few moments before had roared out defiance to a hundred foes, is as weak as that of a little child. 'Well, here I am! How are you all?' he says, feebly.
He is in the gloom; they are in the light. They have not seen, but they have heard. In a moment they spring up, all but poor Trixy, who is crying quietly, and there are cries of 'Wilfrid! Thank God! Father! Father!' And a little voice from the corner is heard to say, 'Bertie has brought him. Don't let Bertie go away!'
All at once there is a lull. They have drawn him under the light, and they see that his face is pale and drawn, and one of them discovers that his arm is roughly bandaged. 'Father has been wounded. Children, don't press round him so,' cries Lady Elton. 'Will some one run for a doctor?'
'The Doctor Sahib is here,' says a voice outside; a quiet voice, which contrasts strangely with the agitated tones of those within the tent. In the next instant Yaseen Khan, the bearer, clad in snow-white tunic and dhootie, and having on his head a voluminous turban—how he had set himself in order no one ever knew—steps forward, and having, with his usual dignity, saluted those in the tent, ushers in the doctor.
Then from that irrepressible little person in the corner there comes a peal of laughter. 'Bravo, Yaseen Khan!' she cries. 'You are decidedly master of the situation. Have you been hiding yourself in a band-box all this time, you most unconscionable old man?'
Yaseen Khan merely salaams and smiles. He is busy attending to his master, and has no time for banter.