So that was an end of Sonny's adventure for the time, since ere he woke, like a young bird at dawn next day, the child seemed to have forgotten all about Shah Sujah's mouse; but only for a time.
At first they thought it nothing but a touch of sun fever from being out all day which made the darling of their hearts so languid. He was down in the heat a little later, too, than was perhaps quite wise, but those holidays at the end of the month, which would give father the chance of settling mother and son in the wee house among the Himalayan pines, and of getting a whiff of fresh air himself, had been so tempting.
But a week after, the doctor, summoned from headquarters, looked into their scared faces and said "Typhoid," ere, loath to leave them to this knowledge, he had to ride back, promising to arrange his work so as to be there as often as possible. He stood talking in undertones to the native doctor in the veranda before mounting, and the sound of their voices made the mother shiver. It was soon after this that the little voice began:
"O Mummie, he had 'quilth'--lovely, lovely 'quilth.' Whereth he gone--the 'quilth'--man? I wanth to thee the 'quilth' again.--Dada, will l'oo shend for the 'quilth'--man?"
"Can't you send for him--somehow?" She had Sonny in her arms, and the heat of him struck through to her own breast. Yet she shivered again.
Two days after, when the cot was set out in the veranda for the sake of the cool evening air, she bent over the child, who lay more languid than suffering among the toys he liked to see even while he did not care to play with them.
"Sonny, the 'quilth'-man has come. Dada has brought him."
Whence, is no matter. The fiat had gone forth, as fiats do go forth. The order had been given to find and, if possible, to bring back one of Shah Sujah's mice, who had wandered on northward through the villages. They had found him, and he had returned with them peaceably, contentedly, serenely.
"Thath's jolly," sighed Sonny. "Now, Mummie, l'oo'l thee the 'quilth,' too."
He wanted to be carried out in those brown arms as before, and stretched his hands to Shah Sujah's mouse, who stood just as he had stood before, silent, uncomprehending, incomprehensible--except, perhaps, to Sonny; but they took him, cot and all, as he lay, across the petunias, and set him down under one of the great shisham-trees, backed by palms and a wide-spreading banyan. The air was dry and balmy; he was as well there as elsewhere until the dew should begin to fall.