"Bring her in."
"She is already in the Presence. If the Protector of the Poor will rise somewhat,--at the other side of the table, Huzoor!--beside the yellow-trousered legs of the guardian of peace,--that is Mussumât Nuttia."
A child some three years of age, with a string of big blue beads round her neck,--a child who had evidently had a very satisfying meal, and who was even now preserving its contour by half-a-yard of sugar-cane, stared gravely back at the Assistant Magistrate's grave face.
"She has no heirs of any kind?" he asked.
"None, Huzoor! Her mother was of the Harni tribe, working harvests in Bhâmaniwallah-khurd. There the misfortune of being eaten by a snake came upon her by the grace of God. Mussumât Nuttia therefore remains,--"
"Oh, Guardian of the Poor!" said two voices in unison, as two tall bearded figures swathed in whitish-brown draperies pressed a step forward with outstretched petitioning hands. They had been awaiting this crisis all day long with that mixture of tenacity and indifference which is seen on most faces in an Indian Court.
"Give her in charge of the head-men of the village; they are responsible."
"Shelter of the world! 'tis falsely represented. The woman was a vagrant, a loose walker, a--"
"Is the order, written? Then bring the next case."
One flourish of a pen, and Mussumât Nuttia became a village-legacy; the only immediate result being that having sucked one end of her sugar-cane dry, she began methodically on the other. Half-an-hour afterwards, mounted on a white pony, with pink eyes and nose, and a dyed pink tail to match, she was on her way back to the cluster of reed huts dignified by the name of Bhâmaniwallah-khurd, or Little Bhâmaniwallah. Big Bhâmaniwallah lay a full mile to the northward, secured against midsummer floods by the high bank which stretched like a mud wall right across the Punjab plain, from the skirts of the hills to the great meeting of the five waters at Mittankote. But Little Bhâmaniwallah lay in the lap of the river, and so Bahâdur, and Boota, and Jodha, and all the grave big-bearded Dogas who fed their herds of cattle on the low ground, and speculated in the cultivation of sandbanks, lived with their loins girded ready to shift house with the shifting of the river. That was why the huts were made of reeds; that was why the women of the village clanked about in solid silver jewelry, thus turning their persons into a secure savings-bank.