He sought a moment in the little niche, hollowed, close to his right hand, out of the hard soil forming the side of his sunken seat, and drew from it a fine twisted cord of brown, red, and cream coloured wool. It was divided into measures by small shells strung on the twist and knotted into their places.
'Hullo!' cried Gordon eagerly, 'that must be hundreds of years old. Those are sea-shells, and very rare. Simpson at the museum showed me one in fossil the other day. I wonder how the dickens the old man got hold of them?'
'Two and a half hâths,' repeated Fuzl Elâhi absently, 'the potter's full measure for a man in the beginning and the end.' He leaned forward rapidly as he spoke, passed the cord round Dan Fitzgerald's chest, and drew the ends together. The curled spirals of the two shells lay half an inch apart. 'So much for the garments,' he muttered. 'Yea! I knew it. The measure of a true pâilwan to a hair's breadth.
'And what am I, potter-ji?' asked George, laughing.
The puzzled look came back to the old man's face. 'The Huzoor may be a pâilwan too. Times have changed.'
'Rough on a fellow, rather!' exclaimed the boy, still laughing. 'Here, Fitz! chuck me over the thing. Is that fair, Miss Tweedie?'
She laughed back into his bright face, as he pulled his hardest to make the two second shells meet, then shook her head.
'Not on yourself, Mr. Keene. You are more of a hero than that, I should say.'
The potter's eyes were on her, then back on George. 'Everything is changed,' he muttered again, 'even the measure of the pots.'
'Then you measure them, do you?' asked Gordon, to whom George had handed the cord, and who was now examining it minutely.