"Kabootri! Kabootri!"
The call was a trifle tremulous, but the girl rose with alacrity, throwing the pigeon into the air with the deft hand of a practised racer as she did so. The bird was practised also, and without a flutter flew off into the blue like an arrow from a bow; then, as if confused by finding itself without a rival, wheeled circling round the rose-red pile till it settled on one of the marble cupolas.
"What is't, father?" she asked, standing on the upper steps and looking down on the two men. She was wonderfully fair, with a little pointed chin, and a wide firm mouth curiously at variance with it, as were the big, broad, black eyebrows with the liquid softness of her eyes.
"Why didst say 'hens,' Kabootri?" replied her father, assuming the fact as the best way of discovering the truth, since her anger at unjust suspicion was always prompt.
"Why?" she echoed absently. "Why?" Then suddenly she smiled. "I don't know, father; but I did!"
The bird-catcher broke out into useless oaths. His daughter had the dove's name, but was no better than a peacock, a peacock in a thief's house; she had lost him five annas for nothing.
Kabootri's eyebrows looked ominous. "Five annas! Fret not for five annas!" she echoed scornfully, turning on her heels towards the gateway; and flinging out her arms she began the pigeon's note--the pigeon's name and her own--"Ka-boo-tri, ka-boo-tri, ka-boo-tri!" It was as if a bird were calling to its mate, and the answer came quickly in the soft whir of many wings as the blue-rocks, which live among the rose-red battlements and marble cupolas, wheeled down in lessening circles.
"Lo! there is Kabootri calling the pigeons," remarked an old gentleman, who was crossing citywards from the Fort; a stoutish gentleman, clothed immaculately in filmy white muslin with a pale pink inner turban folded across his forehead and showing triangularly beneath the white outer one. He was one of the richest bankers in Delhi; by religion a Jain, the sect to whom the destruction of life is the one unpardonable sin, and he gave a nervous glance at the distant figure on the steps.
"Nay! partner, she was in our street last week," put in his companion, who was dressed in similar fashion; "and Kabootri is not as the boys, who are ever at one, with sparrows, for a pice or two. She hath business in her, and a right feeling. She takes once and hath done with it till the value is paid. The gift of the old bodice and shawl, which my house gave her, kept us free for six months. Still, if thou art afraid, we can go round a bit."
Kabootri from her coign of vantage saw them sneaking off the main road, and smiled at their caution contemptuously; but what they had said was true, she had business in her, and right feeling. It was not their turn to pay; so, cuddling a captured pigeon to her breast, she set off in an opposite direction, threading the bazaars and alleys unerringly, and every now and again crooning her own name softly to the bird which, without a struggle, watched her with its onyx eyes, and called to her again.