"Nevertheless, my lord and my master, thy lowly handmaid must not be thwarted in this matter," and Chandni disappeared into the hut.
"Let her have her will, my lord," pleaded Tara; "we owe her much," and with a sweeping gesture she indicated the garden in which they sat and which was Chandni's special care.
The enclosure in which Ram Deen's hut stood used to be, ere the days of Tara and Chandni, the most neglected spot in the village; but, after the arrival of the latter, it gradually began to assume an appearance of neatness and thrift that made Ram Deen's home-coming a daily delight to him.
The young peepul tree in front of the hut was aflame with a gorgeous Bougain-villea, and the flower-beds laughed with marigolds and poppies of many hues sown broadcast. A little runnel sparkled through the garden, and, in one part of its career, chattered pleasantly over a tiny pebbly reach artfully contrived to produce the "beauty born of murmuring sound," which is nowhere more grateful than in the domain of the Hot Wind.
In one corner of the garden were planted radishes, and turnips, and carrots, with their delightful greenery. Chili plants and Cape gooseberries abounded, and many a potherb pleasant to behold and good in a curry. Every plant and shrub gave evidence of loving care, and repaid the tilth bestowed upon them with lavish interest.
A little machand (dais) of plastered mud, under the peepul tree, had been specially built for little Biroo, who decorated it, after the manner of the small boy, with bits of gayly-tinted glass and potsherds, bright feathers and cowries, and such other gauds as appeal to his kind.
In another corner of the compound was a tiny hut, wherein Heera Lal, Tara's old grandfather, lived in such ease and affluence as he had never dreamed of in his wildest imaginings. His day was setting in scented clouds of sweetened tobacco, and he had tyre to eat every morning. Every week he added two annas (six cents) to the hoard under his hearth; it was saved from the allowance made to him by Ram Deen; and he owed no man anything. Moreover, in Ram Deen he had found one who could be most easily overreached, and Ram Deen delighted to be swindled by the old man in matters involving small change.
Even Hasteen had not been forgotten in the improvements made in the enclosure: in one corner a small space had been carefully lepoed (plastered) and roofed with thatch for him. Farther on, Nathoo, Biroo's kid, was tethered to a stake; and beyond that the fawn, Ganda, had a little paddock to herself.
The whole compound was fenced in by a flourishing mandni hedge, which gave Ram Deen a fuller sense of possession. As he sat on the charpoi, lazily smoking his hookah and drinking in the beauty of the garden and of the day beyond, he was the happiest man in all the Terai. When Tara had finished the baby's simple toilet and put it to her breast, the thought passed through Ram Deen's mind that, if God ever smiled, it must be when he looked on a young mother suckling her first-born.
"Respect the aged and infirm," said a whining voice, breaking in upon Ram Deen's pleasant reverie. The speaker, who stood outside the hedge, was an old mendicant equipped like his kind, with an alms-bowl containing a handful of small copper coin and cowries. He was smeared with wood ashes, and his tangled, grizzly hair hung to his waist.