"There was a fourth one, wasn't there?" said young Bertram. "It slipped our way, didn't it?"
He spoke to the Paris frock, which had taken refuge on the opposite pilaster, so that the whole expanse of the wide marble steps now lay between them.
"Huzoor, no!" interrupted the owner of the snakes, hastily, "there were but three--there could only have been three--for see! my serpents obey me."
He was slipping the brutes back to prison again as he spoke, but I noticed his eyes were restless.
"Are you quite sure?" I asked.
He gave me a furtive glance, then carelessly held up a loathsome five-footer. "Cobras like these are very easily counted, Huzoor; besides, as the Presence said, they are all fangless."
The one whose jaws he as carelessly prized open certainly was, and I should have dismissed doubt had not young Bertram at that moment taken up the flute gourd, and with the gay remark, "Let me have a shot at it," commenced--out of fastidiousness as to the mouthpiece, no doubt--to blow into it upside down.
I never saw fear better expressed in any face than on the snake charmer's when he heard the indescribable sound which echoed out into the garden. It grew green as without the least ceremony he snatched the instrument away.
"The Presence must not do that--the snakes do not like strangers."
Young Bertram laughed, "Nor the noise, I expect! The beastly thing makes a worse row wrong side up than right--doesn't it?"