"So! Thou too canst quote the proclamation like other fools--a fool's message to other fools. Where didst thou see it?"
Newâsi looked at him disdainfully. "Can I not read, nephew, and are there many in Delhi as heedless as thou? Why, even the Mufti's people discuss such things."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Ay! they will talk. Gossip hath a double tongue and wings too, nowadays. In old time the first tellers of a tale had half forgot it, ere the last hearer heard it; now the whole world is agog in half an hour. But it means naught. Even his heirship. Who cares in Delhi? None!--out of the palace, none! Not even I. Yet mischief may come of it; so have naught to do with dreamings, Newâsi, if only for my sake. Remember the old saw, 'Weevils are ground with the corn.'"
"Thou canst scarce call thyself that, Abool, and thou so near the throne," she said, still more coldly.
"Have me what pleaseth thee, kind one," he replied, a trifle impatiently; "but remember also that 'the body is slapped in the killing of mosquitoes.'" Then, suddenly, an odd change came to his mobile face. It grew strained, haggard; his voice had a growing tremor in it. "Lo! I tell thee, Newâsi, that Sheeah woman, Zeenut Maihl, in her plots for that young fool, her son, will hang the lot of us. I swear I feel a rope around my neck each time I think of her. I who only want to be let live as I like--not to die before my time--die and lose all the love and the laughter; die mayhap in the sunlight; die when there is no need; I seem to see it--the sunlight--and I helpless--helpless!"
He hid his face in his shuddering hands as if to shut out some sight before his very eyes.
"Abool! Abool! What is't, dear? Look not so strange," she cried, stretching out her hand toward him, yet standing aloof as if in vague alarm. Her voice seemed to bring him back to realities; he looked up with a reckless laugh.
"'Tis the wine does it," he said. "If I lived sober--with thee, mine aunt--these terrors would not come. Nay! be not frightened. Hanging is a bloodless death, and that would confound the soothsayer; so it cuts both ways. And now, since I must have more wine or weep, I will leave thee, Newâsi."
"For the bazaar?" she asked reproachfully.
"For life and laughter. Lo! Newâsi, thou thyself wouldst laugh at those new-come Bunjârah folk I told thee of, who imitate the sahibs so well. But for their eyes," here he nodded gayly to someone below, "they should get one of Mufti's folk to play," he added, his attention as usual following the first lead. "Saw you ever such blue ones as the boy has yonder?"