"Where is Peru?" she began shrilly, still coming down the stairs. "Gambling and dicing, or snoozing and sleeping. How am I to win scholarships if my days are lost over a baby? Ai, sluggard! is that you? Art not ashamed of thyself?"
So, passing through the knot of jeering men into a dark recess in the entry, till her rating ceased over a year-old baby whimpering on the floor on a ragged quilt. "Peace! peace, my son, it is I, Fâtma--yea, it is Fâtma, thy father's sister."
The baby's fat, yellow legs--for it was one of those fair Cashmiri children who look sickly among the brown ones--were astride her curved hip, the whole balance of her thin bare body against its weight, as she paused once more among the men to fling a parting gibe at the sluggard.
"Ai, teri nâni! 'Tis thy baby, I suppose--not mine."
A roar of laughter greeted the words, in which the girl joined, not because she quite understood its cause, but because she was quick enough to see that it was at Peru's expense, not hers. The veil which Nature draws to protect childhood counts for little among the men and women busy in drawing one to conceal their own unnatural vice, but Fâtma's hoary knowledge of evil did not extend to a double entendre. She repeated her sally in childish ineptitude, till Peru with a curse bade her begone and take the boy to his mother.
"Tobah! but she hath a tongue," murmured another lounger.
"Pucki, burri pucki" (ripe or ready--very ready), assented Chundoo, shaking her head wisely. "'Tis time thou hadst a husband for her, O Peru!"
"Not I. Who is to bake bread and take the child? 'Tis ten rupees a month for the other, remember; and Fâtma--I swear it--is a good sort, for all her tongue."
Meanwhile the object of their remarks had begun to climb the stairs with her heavy burden. She had to sit down every now and again to rest, for she was but a poor scrap of a thing, ill-fed from her birth. She paused longer than usual at the turn of the stair whence you could see both ways along the first-story corridors.
"One and one make two--oo--oo,
One and one make two--oo--oo,"