Jhungi superadded perplexity to his other show of emotions. "The Huzoor mistakes," he said, with sudden cheerful understanding. "It was the miscreant Bhungi, my brother, whom the Huzoor licked. The misbegotten idler who tells lies in the bazaar about bones and sacks. So his skin smarts, but my body is whole. Is it not so, Father Tiddu?"
The appeal to his companion was made with curious eagerness, and Jim Douglas, who had heard this tale of the ill-doing double before, looked at the witness to it with interest. That this man was or was not Jhungi's co-offender he could not say with certainty, for there was a remarkable lack of individuality about both face and figure when in repose. But the nickname of Tiddu, or cricket, was immediately explained by the jerky angularity of his actions. Save for the faint frostiness of sprouting gray hairs on a shaven cheek and skull he might have been any age.
"Of a truth it was Bhungi," he said in a well-modulated but creaky voice. "Time was when liars, such as he, fell dead. Now they don't even catch fevers, and if they do, the Huzoors give them a bitter powder and start them lying again. So, since one dead fish stinks a whole tank, virtuous Jhungi, being like as two peas in a pod, suffers an ill-name. But Bhungi will know what it means to tell lies when he stands before his Creator. Nevertheless in this world the master being enraged----"
"Not so, Father Tiddu," interrupted Jhungi glibly, "the Huzoor is but enraged with Bhungi. And rightly. Did not we hide our very faces with shame while he mimicked the noble people? Did we not try to hold him when he fled from punishment--as the Huzoor no doubt heard----"
Jim Douglas without a word slipped his hand down the man's back. The wales of a sound hiding were palpable; so was his wince as he dodged aside to salaam again.
"The Huzoor is a male judge," he said admiringly. "No black man could deceive him. This slave has certainly been whipped. He fell among liars who robbed him of his reputation. Will the Huzoor do likewise? On the honor of a Bunjârah 'tis Bhungi whom the Huzoor beats. He gives Jhungi bitter powders when he gets the fever. And even Bhungi but tries to earn a stomachful as he can when the Huzoors take his trade from him."
"The world grows hollow, to match a man's swallow," quoted Tiddu affably.
The familiar by-word of poverty, the quiet mingling of truth and falsehood, daring and humility in Jhungi's plea, roused both Jim Douglas' sense of humor, and the sympathy--which with him was always present--for the hardness and squalidness of so many of the lives around him.
"But you can surely earn the stomachful honestly," he said, anger passing into irritation. "What made you take to this trade?" He kicked at a pile of properties, and in so doing disclosed the skeleton of a crinoline. Jhungi with a shocked expression stooped down and covered it up decorously.
"But it is my trade," he replied; "the Huzoor must surely have heard of the Many-Faced tribe of Bunjârahs? I am of them.'