"A husband, indeed! Then Chundoo will take the babies? Ai budzart! Think not I do not understand. Let be. They are my babies, not thine; and, thank God, I go not to bed hungry this night."
She sat herself down on the floor as she spoke, and began calmly on the cakes she had been toasting.
"Go, my brother--go back to thy Chundoo," she said, eying him disdainfully--from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, dissolute idler was writ all over him--"Go! we have no need of thee." Then her dignity gave way; she leaped to her feet, scattering the broken cakes upon the floor, and the echoes of her plain speaking followed him down-stairs and flooded up into the room where Lalu the cripple sat, with a ray of sunlight glittering on the gold thread he was laying on the leather.
"Heaven save her husband!" he muttered good-humoredly. Then he sighed. Perhaps the thought that he would never have even a shrewish wife oppressed him. When his grandmother died he would be quite alone in the dark room, with the glittering thread which seemed to make the darkness more dingy and dreary. He was a young man of five-and-twenty, who might stand years of imprisonment in those four walls, with--Heaven be praised!--a scrap of roof open to the sunlight beyond; that is to say, if he could pay the rent. He looked down at his fine, supple hands and smiled, knowing that so long as they were left there was no fear. If only the rest of him had been to match, instead of marred, twisted, helpless!
"'Tis God's will," he said half aloud, as fervently as any Christian; for there are saints of all creeds, and this poor cripple, up three flights of stairs in the Cashmiri quarter, was one of them. Then he took to thinking tenderly of the odd little girl downstairs, whom his grandmother did out of the uttermost farthing. Poor little soul! when he was alone he would at least be able to give her what was due.
Meanwhile Fâtma, down-stairs, was nursing her childish yet all too comprehending wrath against Peru for Hoshiaribi's return. Would she not be angry? It would serve Peru right if she went off straight to Chundoo's house and clawed her.
The room, with its one small window, darkened early. Fâtma put the babies to sleep and went out into the alley to watch, eager to give the first words of disaster. After a time she ventured round the corner. No one. A little farther. No one. Down the next turn. No one still. Perhaps she had chosen the other way. Back up the now pitchy stairs to the dim room. No one there save the sleeping babies. Fâtma's wrath--cooled, rose again against the loiterer, had time to cool again into dismay. She knew well enough, young as she was, what Meran's guidance might mean in the Badami bazar. For all that she waited patiently, crouching on the stairs, peering down into the darkness, watching, listening for the shuffling footstep of a veiled woman--watching and waiting stolidly, without fear or blame.
Such things were, and neither Peru nor Hoshiaribi counted for much with her save as extra appetites for dinner. When ten o'clock chimed from the police station gong at the Mori gate, she went back to the room and drew the bolt of the door. All was dark, save where a ray of moonlight shone through a chink in the shutter. She stole over to this, and, standing in the bar of light, undid a knot in the corner of her veil. One, two, three annas, some pice, and a few cowries.
If the worst came to the worst, and Hoshiaribi did not come back, that would buy a "Maw" at the gimcrack shop round the corner. So she cuddled up on the bed beside the babies contentedly.