"The Huzoor need not threaten," retorted Tiddu, far more calmly as he retwisted his rag of a turban. "The Many-Faced know gratitude. They do not fall on those who find them helpless and protect them."
The thrust was keen, for in truth the old Baharupa had, not half an hour before, by sheer chance found his pupil in difficulties and insisted on seeing him safe home, and on his promising not to go out again till he was stronger; to both of which coercions Jim Douglas, in order to evade suspicion, had consented. Yet, but for Kate, he would have knifed the old man remorselessly. Even now he felt doubtful.
Tiddu, however, saved him further anxiety by stepping close to Kate and salaaming theatrically.
"By Murri-âm and the neem, the mem is as my mother, the child as my child."
So, for the first time, both he and Jim Douglas looked toward Sonny, who, with wide-planted legs and wondering eyes, had been watching Tiddu solemnly; the quaintest little figure with his red and white cheeks and black muzzle.
The old mime burst into a guffaw. "Wâh! what a monkeyling! Wâh! what a tamâsha" (spectacle), he cried, squatting down on his heels to look closer. In truth Sonny was like a hill baboon, especially when he smiled too; broadly, expectantly, at the familiar word.
"Tamathâ-wallah!" he said superbly, "bunao ramâtha, juldi bunao!" (Make an amusement; make it quick.)
Tiddu, a child himself like all his race in his delight in children, a child also in his capacity of sudden serenity, caught up Kate's fallen veil, and in an instant dashed into the hackneyed part of the daughter-in-law, while Kate and Jim Douglas stared; left behind, as it were, by this strange irresponsible pair--the mimic of life, and the child ignorant of what was mimicked. Tragedy a minute ago! Now Farce! They looked at each other, startled, for sympathy.
"Make a funny man now," came Sonny's confident voice, "a funny man behind a curtain--a funny man wif a gween face an' a white face, an' a lot of fwowers an' a bit o' tring."
Tiddu looked round quickly at Jim Douglas. "Wâh!" he said, "the little Huzoor has a good memory. He remembers the Lord of Life and Death."