'Read it, some one, please!' said Lady Arbuthnot, after she had undone the quaint little tasselled silk cord which was fastened with a loop and button round the roll of paper.
But the order was no such easy matter to obey. So far as the conventional 'Arz fidwe yih hai' (This is the request of your petitioner) went, the little group of administrators who responded to her request were fluent enough. After that came complaints of the character, and more than one suggestion that only a regular native reader could be expected to decipher such writing, and that it would be best to hand the document over to the office, which would be sure to make something of it,--a remark which made Lesley, who was listening, wonder whether the accuracy of that something was to be considered at all!
Grace Arbuthnot, however, listening also, let a curious smile come to her face; a smile that gave it an unusual tenderness. 'Where is Mr. Raymond?' she said suddenly. 'Going, did you say? Will some one call him back, please!'
He appeared, ready for his drive home in rather a violent blazer, and once more there was that unfailing challenge in his polite--'They tell me I am wanted, Lady Arbuthnot?'
'Yes! to read this,' she replied, holding out the hieroglyphic.
In all her life of beauty and grace she had possibly never looked more beautiful, more graceful, and Jack Raymond realised it; realised also that, so far as that beauty, that grace were concerned, he had not forgotten--that he would never forget! And the certainty roused all his antagonism. For a moment he stood like a naughty child refusing to say its lesson; then he took the paper from her, and ran his eye down it.
'Persian,' he said. 'I had better give you the gist of it. The writer is one Khôjeeya Khânum, a pensioner. The Nawâb Jehân Aziz is her representative; he seems to have been taking toll, as they always do--it is madness paying pensions in the lump, as we do. She is starving, I suppose; they generally are! No'--a faint interest dispersed some of the contempt in his face--'it seems she wants money for a specific purpose--to buy the "essence of happiness." That word is itr-i-khush, isn't it, sir?'
The commissioner, thus appealed to--a man who was seldom in fault in speaking the vernaculars--frowned over the symbol.
'Itr-i-khush, 'm, it may be. But it doesn't matter, since it is money she wants? I've had one or two complaints about that sweep Jehân Aziz's pensioners already, Lady Arbuthnot, and we are going to inquire. So I'll put this one's name down too, if I may. Khôjeeya Khânum--thanks. Well, good-night, Lady Arbuthnot! I've a reader with a file yards high waiting me--most important papers. Good-night, Raymond; you haven't forgotten the trick, I see. You are still as good a moonshi as ever, isn't he, Lady Arbuthnot?'
'Except in regard to the "Essence of Happiness,"' she replied coolly, making Jack Raymond stare at her, and Lesley once more become impatient.