The lump had come back to his throat, and the doctor gave something between a laugh and a sob.
But they neither of them said anything about the other janowar. Perhaps because there was a difficulty in finding an epithet to suit Shah Sujah's mouse.
[SUTTU.]
I.
A grove of date-palms; each cluster of carved stems set in its feathery crown and base, separated from its neighbours by sandy spaces, where the snakes sunned themselves right in the wayfarer's path. Finding few victims, however; for the karait, stretched out like a blue whip-lash, curved back to the prickly cover at the distant step, and though the dusk-coloured vipers tied in true-lovers' knots held their ground, their evil temper gave warning of their presence as scale rustled on scale in the angry sliding of the watchful coil.
Day and night the sweeping fringes overhead swayed softly, even when no breath stirred the tangle below. But now, when the coming of dawn sent that curious whisper of wind through the world, as if warning it of what the sun may disclose, the leaves tossed their long arms wildly.
A stretch of level land curved inward to the palm-grove; outward till it merged on the village common with its grey-spined caper-bushes set with coral buds. In the distance, shadowy in the half light, was a native town, flat-roofed against the sky. Close at hand an open grave, with a man and woman standing beside it. A queer couple. The old man, dwarfed to distortion, grotesquely ugly; the woman young, straight as a palm, supremely handsome.
"Lo, they come, Shâhbâsh!" she said, in a bold, mellow voice which fitted her appearance. As she shaded her eyes with her hand, the coarse madder veil she wore fell from her broad shoulders as if cut in stone.
"Wah illah! Thou hast sight to boast of, Mother Suttu," replied her companion. She might have been his daughter in age, but he used the title of respect due to all decent women from one not of their own blood.
"Yea, 'tis true," she echoed, carelessly. "The Potter's hand slipped not when he made me. I have naught to bring against him." It was perhaps a heartless truism, considering her company.