Left it alone and sought for something--
Over hill and dale, through night and day, seeking for something.'
The galloping wheel, which had responded always to the mad hurry of the recurring refrain, slackened slowly. Rose gave a sigh of relief, and glanced at Lewis Gordon to see if he too had been oppressed by that shrinking recognition of a stress, a strain, a desire, such as she had never felt before; but he was leaning forward, his chin on his curved hand, intent on listening, so she could not see his face.
'By the powers,' came Dan Fitzgerald's voice above the softening hum, 'the old chap has made an Ayôdhya pot--the same shape, I mean.'
'He always does when he tells this story,' broke in George, quite pleased with the success of his entertainment. 'I don't think he quite knows why he does it, however. Sometimes he says the woman was looking for one; sometimes that she always carries one in her left hand to balance the world in her right. But he always takes the unbaked pot to the ruins and buries it with two of those odd little ninepins, he calls men and women, inside it. He is as mad as a hatter, you know.'
'Several hatters,' assented Gordon fervently, 'but it is an interesting theory of creation.'
'Now don't,' protested Dan, sitting with his long legs crunched up on the low stool close to the potter. 'It is too human for dissection by the Folklore Society. But I'm surprised at one thing. The wrestlers--they are persistent figures in Indian tales, Miss Tweedie--are generally represented as giants. They are pigmies here.'
'The Huzoor is right and wrong,' replied the potter in answer to an inquiry; 'the pâilwans were neither pigmies nor giants. They were as the Huzoor--two and a half hâths round the chest--neither more nor less.'
'That's a good shot,' remarked Dan in English, 'forty-five inches according to my tailor. You have an accurate eye, potter-ji,' he added in Hindustani, 'only half an inch out.'
'Not a hair's-breadth, Huzoor,' replied the old man mildly. 'The measures of the pailwâns is the measure of the Huzoor. I have it here; my fathers used it, and I use it.'