But there was one other wrong about which he was not so satisfied. Before death came he wanted to restore Hindal to his mother. And Hindal did not come. He had started from Kâbul but had been delayed by marriages in his tutor's family.
"I must see him," complained his father. "Write and bid him come at once. I need him sorely."
It was the one bitter drop in the cup which he drank contentedly, smilingly. He held an audience every day, laughing and joking with his old friends over past times, and when evening came he would sit with some woman's hand in his and talk of little things.
Sometimes it was his most reverend of paternal aunts, sometimes it was even poor Astonishingly Beautiful Princess. And little Ak-Begum brought him posies of violets, or, best of all, Dearest-One would sit, her hand in his, and both would be unable to say anything because their thoughts reached so very, very far back.
And there was always a joke when Mahâm gave him his medicine in the Crystal-Bowl-of-Life. It had found its proper use at last, he said: for this it was neither too big nor too small.
So the days slipped by.
"Why does not Hindal come? Where is he?" he said fretfully, one evening; and they told him that the boy had reached Delhi and would be with him in a day or two.
"Who brought the news?" he asked, and when they said it was the tutor's son who had come on in hot haste to re-assure the Emperor, he bid them bring the messenger up, and a tall, half-grown lad appeared.
"Thy name," asked Babar faintly.
"Mîr-Bârdi," replied the youth.