The little maiden pursed up her lips and sat quiet for a minute. Then she said firmly: "I think he is too beautiful to put into words."
Her father, however, did not share her opinion in regard to her looks. He was never weary of praising them, and it was a pretty sight to see him holding her by the hand as he took her round to inspect all his new buildings and gardens. And nothing would serve him but that they must go out, both of them, and see Dholpur, which, in a vague way, might remind them of beloved Kâbul. And from Dholpur they went to Sikri where they spent a happy month rowing about in the big tank. Here little Gulbadan used to sit for hours at her father's feet while he wrote up his memoirs in the summer house of the great garden.
"Lo! little mouse," he would say, looking round to lay a kindly hand on her smooth head, "mayhap thou mayest write a book thyself some day; thou hast more brains than thy brothers." And he sighed; for of late Humâyon had not been very satisfactory; nor, for the matter of that, were Kamran and Askari, his other two grown-up sons, exactly after his own heart.
Gulbadan shook her head gravely. "The Emperor speaks in ignorance of my brother Alwar," she said, not without hauteur, "but when my mother, Her Highness, Dildar-Begum arrives next week the Emperor will admit that his son is a rarity of the world, and a unique of the age."
Her dignity was supreme, and Babar laughed. "Nicer than Hindal, Gullu?" he asked, knowing her preference for the boy who had been brought up with her under Mahâm's care.
The child flushed up visibly, and tears stood in her eyes. "Lo!" she said, "Hindal is indeed my brother. Mayhap he is not clever; but I love him, I love him!"
The Emperor caught her in his arms and kissed her tears.
"So do I, sweetheart, so does everybody. Lo! I dare swear it! we all love each other, do we not?"
In truth it seemed like it. Babar's three wives were there after a time and yet none of them quarrelled; perhaps because no one in the wide world could have quarrelled with childless Mubârika, the Blessed-Damozel, and Dildar was too much occupied with little Alwar to think of anything else. He was, indeed, a marvellous child, of extraordinary beauty and brains. One of those children over whom old folk shake their heads and say: "He is not long for this world." Though barely six he was, as his little sister had said, a unique of the age, and Babar, who had not seen him since he was a baby in arms, was almost pathetically proud of him.
His devotion, indeed, raised a suspicion of jealousy even in Mahâm's generous heart for her own son Humâyon--and one evening as the husband and wife were sitting together in the open balcony of the Palace, she hinted that Humâyon might have to play second fiddle in his father's graces.