“With me!” she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows very innocently.
“Yes, dear. I heard some one scuffling about in here and talking just as I came in. Now, Nouna, my darling, why don’t you tell me?” he asked very softly, coming a step nearer.
But she curled herself up in the corner of the couch, and looked up at him like a marmoset who has broken a Dresden cup—for a marmoset knows Dresden, and prefers it as a plaything to the ordinary breakfast china.
“Don’t look like that. You frighten me,” she said in a low voice, with an inclination divided between weeping and running away.
George came and knelt by her, but as she shrank back he did not offer to touch her.
“Listen to me, little one. I am not angry, only sorry you will not tell me what I ask. Who was the woman I heard talking to you just now? Was it your mother?”
“Mamma! Oh, no, no, no,” said she with a convincing accent of astonishment. “I tell you there wasn’t anybody; I was singing to myself,” she added with less appearance of sincerity.
George drew back deeply wounded, and looking more stern than he guessed. In the silence between them he heard the rattle of the lock in the next room, and the shaking of the door. He walked up to the folding-doors which led into the bedroom, while Nouna turned her head to watch him anxiously. Crouching down on the other side of the bed, with more of the appearance of an animal than ever now that she was foiled in her attempt to escape, was the Indian servant Sundran.
“Get up,” said George shortly. “No one is going to hurt you. What are you doing here?”
“I was doing no harm, sahib. I came to see my pretty missee, Missee Nouna, my own foster-child that I nurse and love. She send for me, sahib, she send for me; she lonely without me. Sahib, let me stay. I will serve you, only for food to keep me alive if you let me stay.”