The Thibetan milkmaid had gone away to her own people before Kathleen could persuade her mother to go and talk to her.
But Kathleen would describe the dark-skinned woman, with her dirty rags and glittering beads, so earnestly and so frequently, that her mother began to suspect there was something more she had not told her. "Well?" she would say questioningly; and then Kathleen would stop short, remembering her father's words.
Mrs. Desborough asked the ayah what the Thibetan had said.
"Nothing, nothing," was the quick reply. "We only tried to comfort the little beebee, and stop her tears, that fell like evening rain."
The ayah was frightened, for her mistress turned pale and faint at the most distant allusion to her dreadful loss. So she led the children away, and filled their pinafores with rice to feed the fishes.
Whilst Horace was throwing it by handfuls into the basin of the fountain, which was soon a moving mass of heads and tails, the ayah drew Kathleen away.
"Look at the mem-sahib," she whispered, so that Horace should not hear. "It is the cry for the lost one shut in her heart that hurts. Don't wake it."
Kathleen hung her head; for the first time in her life it seemed wrong to speak out all her thoughts to her mother. But the hope still lived on—Carl would some day be found. It helped her to fulfil her father's parting charge, and try to give the sunshine to Horace and her mother. The dry heat of May gave place at last to the sultry, oppressive damp of the rainy season; and Mrs. Desborough began to long for home.
CHAPTER IX.
OLIVER AND HIS UNCLE.