'Mention not such things, my daughter,' went on the grave voice, 'lest He take thee at the word. Then what wouldst say? And see! Go no more to the potter's yard. It is not safe. Wouldst have the son come to thee with his mark on the breast? I trow not.'

They had come forward one by one to cluster round the speaker, their dark assenting eyes on Rose.

''Tis not to be helped, though,' put in another. 'Do I not know? I, Jewun, whose son died of it this year; yet I remember the old ways and my mother's counsel. Lo! it is Fate; naught else. And 'tis better to crack and be done with it. Then folk know. Not like my new milk-jar this day. Sound to sight and touch, yet six good quarts of milk spilled on the ground, as it crumbled like sand ere a body could get a hand to it. The old man shall give me another in its place. It is not fair.'

'Nay! Mai Jewun,' put in a third, 'a pot comes to pieces ever; if not one, then another way, when it is tired of going to the well for water. Thou hast naught to complain about. Ai sisters! hither returns the sahib! He will be angry that we have spoken to his mem.'

'He will not be angry,' protested Rose; but the thought was beyond them. They were off swiftly, yet sedately, only the elder woman pausing to waggle her finger again, and say, 'Go not to the potter's. It is not well. I, Junto, mother of seven, say so.'

There were tears in Rose's eyes when Lewis came up and in consequence he did look angrily at the retreating figures. She was pale and tired, he said, and must send an excuse to Mrs. Dalel. He would not have her knocking herself up with other folks' infants. So they went back quietly to the two white tents standing beyond the Mori gate, where the pigeons, as of old, circled iridescent round the dark niches. As of old, too, the clash of silver anklets came from the shadows, since Chândni was back again in her old haunts; but with a recognised position, for her Highness Beatrice Elflida Norma was a shrewd little person, and knew that she would need help to hold her own amid the intrigues of that surely-coming long minority which lay in the future. It is a recurring fraction that long minority, in the problem of our dealings with petty principalities and powers; for civilisation does not conduce to longevity with the native nobleman, and Dalel, with the income from the stud farm, was diligently burning his feeble little constitution at both ends. On the sly, however, for virtue, to all outward appearance, reigned at Hodinuggur. Only that morning Rose had inspected a female school with rows of nice little girls with very clean primers and brand-new slates. A brand-new visitors' book, too, in which Rose had, with some misgivings, inscribed her name at the end of a trite little remark on the blessings of education; for she was only just beginning to make up her bundle of opinions, and was not quite sure of them.

But that night, as he was carefully guiding her steps through the maze of ropes and pegs to the door of the sleeping-tent, she paused suddenly to say to her husband--

'Lewis! I'm glad we came here. I thought it would be so painful seeing George's deserted grave and reviving the old memories; but it has only seemed to make it all more natural, to make everything, somehow, more simple.'

This, then, was what the years were bringing to Rose. She and Lewis were very happy; though sometimes, especially when they were out in camp together, alone, he would enter a feeble protest against her lack of sentiment. When, after work and dinner were over, they sat beside the roaring stove--the mingled lamplight and firelight making the tent cosy beyond belief--and he, laying down the volume of Thackeray from which he was reading aloud, would remark, for the hundredth time, that Rose was like one of his favourite heroines.

'If you say those stupid things, Lewis,' she would reply, 'I will make you read shilling shockers, and then you can't--or I hope you won't.'