"You have done me no harm," said Feroza, with a kind smile. "You have harmed yourself with cinnamon tea and greasy fritters in the other zenanas, and you shall have some, English fashion, to take away your headache."
So grumbling Mytâb brought an afternoon tea-tray duly supplied with a plate of thin bread-and-butter from within, and Feroza's small brown face beamed over Julia Smith's surprise. "He will think himself back amongst the mems! won't he?" she asked with a happy laugh.
Would he? As she jolted home in her palanquin Julia's head whirled. Old and new, ignorance and wisdom!--here was a jumble. A stronger brain than hers might well have felt confusion. For it was sunset in that heathen town, and from the housetops, in the courtyards, in the very streets, men paused to lay aside their trivial selves and worship an ideal. Not one of the crowd giving place to the mission-lady but had in some way or another, if only by a perfunctory performance of some rite, testified that day to the fact that religion formed a part of his daily round, his common task. And on the other side of the world, whence the missions come?--
Meanwhile Kareema, bewailing the useless cards, found herself backed up by old Mytâben. Such knowledge, the old woman said, would have been more useful than learning to be cleaner than God made you. 'Twas easy to sneer at henna-dyed hands; but was that worse than using scented soaps like a bad one, and living luxurious? Sheets and towels, forsooth! Why, Shah-jehan himself never dreamed of such expenses.
"I like them, for all that," cried Kareema gaily; "and I think the mems are wise to have big looking-glasses. It is hateful only seeing a little bit of one's self at a time. And Feroza and I are going out to be admired like the mems, aren't we, Feroza?"
"If the Meer wishes it," replied her sister-in-law gravely.
Mytâb looked from one to the other. "Have a care, players with fire!" she said shrilly. "Have a care! Is the world changed because it reads books and washes? Lo! the customs of the fathers bind the children."
"Mytâb hath been mysterious of late," remarked Kareema, giving a queer look, as the old lady moved away in wrath. "Ah me! if I had but my handsome Inaiyut dicing in the vestibule 'twould be better for all of us, maybe."
Feroza laid her soft hand gently on the other's shoulder. "I am so sorry for thee, dear! but we will love thee always and be a sister and brother--"
Kareema's look was queerer than ever, and she laughed hysterically.