She saw another laughing face looking down; a face that with its orange-coloured veil showed like a ripe fruit amongst the burnished green leaves. The next instant Mihr-un-nissa's lithe, still-childish figure had swung itself to the ground and her forefinger was wagging roguishly at Umm Kulsum's hasty and futile effort to conceal her work.
"Oh fie! Ummu. What! secrets?" came the mocking voice. "Dost not know," here it took on a ludicrous likeness to her mother's, "that only ill-bred young women degrade themselves by duplicity." Then she cuddled close and looked at Umm Kulsum with a perfectly ravishing smile. "Say, sweetheart! is it a love letter?"
Umm Kulsum gave a little shriek of horror. "Go to! thou art a bad girl, Mihru! How didst come here? And how darest thou even mention love letters?"
Mihr-un-nissa cuddled closer. "How? Because I needed to see thee, Ummu--Auntie Ummu I shall call thee, dearest. So when they denied me, I crept out by the window and along the wall. Mother is at the reception, but I needed thee. And as for love--Ah! Ummu! I have seen him!"
"Seen whom?" asked Umm Kulsum stolidly. Her mind was busy with likely lies, for she knew the penetrating wit, the cold clear-sightedness, of this child-girl.
"Why!--my man, of course," came the reply with sage noddings of the pretty head.
Everything save horrified outrage flew from Umm Kulsum's mind. "Thou--thou shameless one!--thou canst not mean it. And if thou hadst--by chance--to dare to say it. Mihr-un-nissa Begum, say it is not true!"
The pretty head nodded again cheerfully. "But it is true, Auntie Ummu, and it was not by chance. I climbed into a tree--thou knowest I can climb trees--and saw him over the wall as he came to sup with father. And I like him. He hath a kind, strong face. And--lo! Ummu, one can be queen of a man's heart."
As she sate there, her small slender hands closed on each other as if she held something very precious, a mysterious smile came to her eyes, her mouth. Years younger than her companion, in all things of womanhood she outpassed her utterly. So, as she paused, sudden shame came to her.
"And dost know, Ummu," she went on, a fine blush invading her cheeks that were the colour of ripe wheat, her hands unloosing themselves to plait and replait in her confusion the fold of Umm Kulsum's best overcoat which lay beside her, "I--I think he saw me for--for he smiled--though he walked on sedately as a gentleman should. But I am not sure his eyes----"