"An ushruffi he falls," cried one watching the leaper.
"A dirrhm he doesn't!" retorted another who had a broad, frank, good-natured face.
"There! He's done! I said so," continued the first not without satisfaction, for he was rival for championship.
"Not he!" asserted the second gleefully as the stumble was overborne by an extra effort. "Trust him and his luck! He wins! Babar wins!"
And Nevian foster-brother's voice was the loudest in acclaim as the frog-like figure with wide-spread legs, after successfully backing the long row of bent slaves arranged--with due regard to difficulty--adown the meadow-path, finally overtopped the last and with a "hull-lul-la la!" of triumph subsided incontinently into the white clover. And there it lay on its back gazing at the blue sky cheerfully.
It was that of rather a lanky boy; to western eyes a well-grown one of at least fifteen, with a promise of six feet and more of manhood in its long, loose-jointed limbs. But Babar, heir-apparent to this little kingdom of Ferghâna was only in his twelfth year. His face, nevertheless, was extraordinarily intent, with an intentness beyond his years, as he lay silent among the clover; for something had come between him and his game, between him and the work-a-day world. Something that came to him often with the sight of a wide stretch of blue sky, a narrow stretch of blue river, or even with the sight of a flower upon that river's brim.
How glorious! How splendid it was--this world in which he, forsooth, played leap-frog! The clover on which he lay, how sweet it smelt, how soft it was! It was just like a mantle of lambskin, covered as it was, till you could hardly see a speck of green, with its white, furry blobs of blossom.
A lambskin mantle!--that was a good description!
And the sky was like the turquoises that folk brought down from the higher hills in the summer when they were not weaving the purple cloth, which somehow always got mixed up in his mind with the pale blue. Why both recalled the multi-coloured tulips on the mountain slopes was a puzzle, except that one beauty recalled another. At that rate, however, memory in Ferghâna would be unending, for though it was, as everyone knew, situated on the extreme boundary of the habitable world, it was abundantly pleasant!
The lad's amber-tinted hazel eyes darkened as he ran over in his mind the excellencies of his native valley hidden away at the back of the Pamirs.