He roused, however, at her touch on his shoulder.
"Let me come," she said; "I've--I've nothing to do here."
He looked at her for a moment, then turned his eyes away. "Will you?" he said in an odd voice; "that--that will be awfully jolly."
So in a day or two, armed with the dead baby's bottles, feeding-cups, God knows what, and such mother's lore as the dead child had taught her, she was at work in a white tent set in the shade of the only tree at Chotia Aluwala.
"I must have more milk," she said decidedly, and there was a new light in her eyes, a new tone in her voice, when they brought her yet another whimpering black baby. "That is the end of it; by hook or by crook I must have more milk. There must be some, somewhere. Send out and see!"
So, because when a woman is standing between death and children, her orders are the orders of "She-who-must-be-obeyed," they sent. And, of course, one of the first discoveries made by the native underling to whom the inquiry was entrusted, was Surâbhi. In other words, that an old Brahmin, in receipt actually of relief, was the possessor of a remarkably fine cow, if not in full milk, yet capable of supporting an infant or two. It needs the vicious flair of an underpaid chuprassi to find such chances for tyranny and extortion at the first throw off. But this one was found, and when Gopi returned that evening to the little courtyard, an official with a brass lotah was waiting for milk. It would be paid for, of course, by-and-by. Gopi could keep an account, and the Sirkar no doubt would pay, provided the proper official certified it by a countersign.
The old man was too confused, too tired to be ready with protest at a moment's notice. So that night he went supperless to bed. But in the white tent over at Chotia Aluwala, an Englishwoman's pale face had quite a colour in it.
"Fancy!" she said, "two whole quarts of the most beautiful, rich milk! I would reward that man if I were you, hubby. I am to have the same every day. It--it means four lives at least!"
Possibly, for a baby takes less to keep it alive than an old man.
Small tragedies of this sort are common enough in India, but it is difficult to give all their fineness of detail to English eyes.