Another crowd, before a shop, delayed her as she limped along in the gutter. There was a policeman in it this time, and a voice protesting that it was tyranny. What had the police to do with the selling of a quilt--a quilt that was no longer wanted, seeing that the grandfather had found freedom?
'Ari, idiot!' said the policeman, 'have a care I do not burn it.'
'Give him his percentage, brother!' advised Govind the editor, who, as usual, was hunting the bazaars for news. 'That is what he wants. That is the trick. Yea! I know. Give it him, or he will claim the whole in the name of the plague. That is what the Sirkar does in Bombay. It claims all--money, jewels, clothes. And it will do the same here. This is but the beginning.'
''Twill be the end for thee and thy paper, editor-jee, if thou tellest more lies,' retorted the constable in righteous indignation. 'It is orders, I tell thee! There is suspicion that some one----'
Govind, who, as usual, also had been at the bhang shop, gave a jeering laugh. 'Bapree bap! some one! 'Tis always some one or some thing; but we of Nushapore, my masters, will show them we are not as those of Bombay. We can fight for our own.'
There was a surge of assent in the crowd, as if it sought to begin at once, and Khôjee, clutching her gold bangle tighter, fled incontinently down a by-street. So little might turn her limp into a fall, and then that fifteen-rupees'-worth might roll into the gutter and be snatched up by any one. Here, in the tortuous alleys, it was at least quiet, though it was dark. She slithered in the welter of the day's rubbish flung from the high houses on either side, and a scamper of pattering feet told her she had disturbed some rats battening on a bit of choice garbage.
'Allah hamid!' she muttered piously, and went on. The sound of wailing from one of the scarce-seen houses she was passing reminded her regretfully of the cardamoms; for she had left shops behind her. Then she remembered one, not far from the gate of the city, which she must pass; one of those miscellaneous shops which are always to be found near city gates, where travellers can buy most things--flour and vegetables, red peppers, pipe bowls, tobacco. Ay, and opium perhaps; but on the sly, since there was no licence over the door. It was not the sort of shop that such as Khôjeeya Khânum patronised as a rule; still it might have cardamoms.
The low-caste buniya, with a wrinkled monkey face and long iron-grey hair, who crouched behind dingy platters and dusty bags, looked ghoulish by the one flickering light set in the solitary cavern of a shop; for on either side of it was blank wall, trending away to narrow alleys.
Khôjee hesitated. Such men drove many nefarious trades. Still this one might have cardamoms!
'Cardamoms! he echoed with a leer. 'Yea, yea, princess! True cardamoms to satisfy the best of royal blood--he! he!' Those tall houses round his shop held many such as she, and he had recognised the accent.