“Well then, go below, and make yourself some coffee, and bring us some. This is young Mr. Barclay Stuart. He too will go with us when all is ready.”
Pandoo turned to Barclay and salaamed.
“I hope you is well, sah, and you’ vife?”
Barclay laughed outright.
Antonio hastened to explain that he was but a boy, and that boys didn’t marry in this country.
“You ’scuse me den,” said Pandoo, with another salaam, “but I am one much big fool. I go to make de coffee. I bling de poor chile some too.”
In a very short time Pandoo returned with a tray, with cups of coffee and fancy biscuits. But never before had Barclay, or “the dear child,” as Pandoo called him, tasted so delicious an infusion.
Pandoo himself squatted tailor-fashion at the other end of the room.
He conversed with Antonio, but in a language that Barclay could not understand one word of.
Sometimes the Indian’s face was lit up with smiles, but there were moments when dark lightning seemed to flash from his eyes as he spoke, and he motioned with his hand as if waving sword or dagger in the battlefield. At such times he looked as fierce as the wildest tiger ever encountered in Indian jungles.