But the little black head drifting down stream behind the big one never turned from its set purpose. Wood floated, and so might babies. Why not?
Why not, indeed! But, as a matter of fact, Mai Jewun was right. A dilapidated bed-leg was picked up on a sand-bank miles away when the floods subsided; and Moti joined the herd next day to chew the cud of her reflections contentedly. But the village Legacy and Heart's Delight remained somewhere seeking for something,--that something, doubtless, which had turned the bed-leg into Sirdar Begum.
FOOTNOTES
[ 1]: Head of a religious community.
[Footnote 2]: Name of Vishnu.
[Footnote 3]: Runjeet Singh never enlisted a man who, in counting up to thirty, said puch-is for five and twenty, but those who said punj-is were passed. In other words, the patois was made a test of whether the recruit belonged to the Trans-Sutlej tribes or the Cis-Sutlej.
[Footnote 4]: Bunniah, a merchant. Bunniah-ji signifies, as Shakespeare would have said, Sir Merchant.
[Footnote 5]: Zemindar-ji, Sir Squire.
[Footnote 6]: Baba, as a term of familiarity, is applied indifferently to young and old.
[Footnote 7]: Purohit, a spiritual teacher, a sage, answering in some respects to the Red Indian's medicine-man.