"It--it scratches" he muttered faintly "there is some mistake."
There was no mistake about the scratch however. It showed distinct, and wrote the truth without a shadow of doubt. This was no diamond; it was a fraud, like the other!
For an instant Birbal's head whirled. Then helplessly he fingered his purse again. Could he by chance have made a mistake and sent back the wrong one? Impossible; and yet?
He sank on the jeweller's seat and covered his face with his hands. For once his wit was not quick enough to grasp the situation, and-- clogging thought!--that dim suspicion recurred despite denial--Had he by chance made a mistake?
So Âtma as she sate apart on the roof watching the Mahommedan woman prepare Zarîfa's body for the burial which was to take place at sunset had no monopoly in confusion and wonder. She could take no part in what was going on. She dare not, from fear of defilement, even touch the dead child with a kiss, but she sate jealously watching that every ceremonial was duly carried out.
"Lo! she is lovely as any houri now!" chattered the Dom women who had come in to perform the last offices, as they bound the corpse with gold tinsel to the string bedstead on which it was to be carried to the grave. "'Tis a sin, for sure, to have more body in death than in life; but what will you? Mayhap Munkir and Niker[[13]] seeing her look so, may not ask questions, but give her a decent body for Paradise--sure she needed one poor thing!"
So they stood looking down on their handiwork. And in truth the crippled child looked very beautiful. The rebeck player, saying it was the custom of his tribe, had hired from somewhere a low, oblong, lidless coffin, more like a deep picture frame than anything else; and in this, as it lay on the bed, these tirewomen of the dead, had so disposed draperies, and pillows, and whatnot, that all the curves of the budding womanhood showed beneath the face that remained more beautiful even in death than it had been in life. It was covered only with a fine network, for the veil was draped carefully on either side the slender neck. One corner of it, and a loop of jasmin chaplet fell over the dingy worn gilt of the coffin frame.
"Lo! many will envy Death his bride and send regrets after her as she passes by," said the oldest of the Domni, nodding her head wisely. And it was so.
For as the two bearers--it needed but two for that bier--shuffled at sunset-tide with their light burden through the crowded bazaar, more than one careless eye grew to sudden interest. And one spectator, an idle reckless looking man who sate on a sherbet-seller's threshold joking with a light woman in an upper balcony, ceased his sarcasms to murmur a stanza from Hafiz; for he was rhymster too.
No more from poet's lips
Shall love songs pass
She who once garnered them
Is dead--alas!