Fâtma shook her head.
"Oh no, Huzoor! But the baby could sleep in the upper primary, and then, Miss Sahib, I could soon read it. Now I am always on the stairs."
Another incontrovertible fact. Teacher had visions of the big, yellow-legged baby going up and down the ladder of learning on Fâtma's curved hip. That, however, could not possibly be held equivalent to a pass from one department to another. Yet the child's face was deadly earnest; a sudden sympathy and compassion brought a promise to consider the matter.
"But there are already three babies in the primary!" shrilled the Mohammedan head of that department, a portly lady with voluminous skirts trailing behind her, and red betel-stained teeth. There was no one in the school from the top story to the bottom who was the equal in deportment of Mumtaza Mihr--un--nissa Begum, whose father had been Munshi to some dead-and-gone Mogul. To begin with, she could silence every one with Persian epithets, and the pebbles of her polished speech hit hard. "These may Providence protect, but God hath sent this proof of his bounty to a handmaiden who is 'second-year student.' What! are we to reduce this gift of the Most High to a standard beneath its birth? Let Hoshiaribi, out of her plenty, appoint a wet-nurse, or let its amiable aunt supply it with 'Maw' at four annas. To allow her a primary pass without due qualification, in my poor thought, is non-regulation; and, in addition, a bad precedent."
Mumtaza mihr-un-nissa bowed her sleek, net-veiled head, and threw out her podgy fat hands, as if deprecating her own opinions.
For all that, Fâtma stayed among the infants, and spent most of her time on the wide stairs with the yellow-legged baby, while Peru joked shamelessly with Chundoo on the sunshiny steps, and Hoshiaribi, in the academic silence up-stairs, worked a crewel antimacassar between the equations. It suited her indolent, comfort-loving nature. Ever since she entered the school, nearly sixteen years ago, she had been in receipt of a scholarship of sorts. At the beginning influence may have had something to do with her good fortune, for her mother was only a poor, good-looking Cashmiri, and her reputed father dead. But since then she had justified her selection. If not clever, she was studious, and quite understood that learning meant livelihood. In the good old days when the one great object was to catch and keep a scholar, this might have gone on indefinitely; but now, under new rules, Hoshiaribi's scholarship would cease in a year, whether she passed or did not pass. Then she must become a teacher, or starve on Peru's five rupees.
The prospect was not pleasing. It would be a very different thing having to worry over thirty unwilling pupils in a poky little room, spending part of your own pay in bribes so as to get the grant for attendance, and then never knowing from day to day if some neighbourly spite would not result in empty mats on inspection-days.
"But if you pass," suggested a Hindu widow in her class, "you can go on, as I am doing, into the medical school. That is two years' more scholarship, and certain employment afterwards."
"'Tis all very well for you," muttered Hoshiaribi, sullenly. "You only came in three years ago. I have been here all my life. I like it. I don't want to go home and nurse the babies. I don't want to work. The committee paid me to learn, and I have learned. I will learn anything else they like. Why, then, should they take away my scholarship?"
"How foolish you are!" said the little Bengali; "you don't seem to understand what a scholarship is."