"What rooms have you got below?" asked Bob.
"We use the ground floor only for stores. In the dark you didn't see, I suppose, that the walls are loopholed. The stone's very thick, and in that little trouble I told you about we found them a capital fortification. The kitchen is outside; the servants have their own out-houses. The cook is Chinese, as I said; the khansaman is a Pathan; there are one or two other fellows whose nationality is an unknown quantity. Chunda Beg is a treasure, as grave as a judge, and as resourceful as a Jack-tar. You'll take most interest, I expect, in my storekeeper, Ditta Lal, a Bengali--what's commonly called a Babu. I wager you haven't spoken to him for more than two minutes before he tells you he is a B.A. of Calcutta University, and he'll tell you the same thing ten times a day until he chokes."
"Why should he choke?" asked Lawrence.
"Because he's getting so disgustingly fat. I really mustn't raise his screw--he calls it emoluments--any more. When he first came to me he was thin and weedy like many of his kind; but he made himself extremely useful, and I've increased his pay rather often. You'd be surprised at the result if you could compare him as he is with what he was. Upon my word, with every rise he swells visibly. I shouldn't like to say what his waist measurement is now. I told him the other day that I really couldn't raise him any more, for fear it proved fatal, and he smiled in my face and said, 'Ah, sahib, God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' which you won't beat for a piece of delightful inconsequence."
Talking thus, Mr. Appleton interested and amused the boys for an hour or two until it was time to turn in. The night was cold; but snuggled under thick blankets they slept like tops, and did not waken until the khansaman entered with water for their morning tub.
At breakfast Mr. Appleton announced that his first business for the day was the holding of a durbar to enquire into the scuffle of the night before.
"My discipline is as easy as possible," he said; "there are few rules, but I see that they are obeyed. The men represent some of the most unruly tribes of the frontier, but they know I mean what I say, and on the whole I've had very little trouble with them. Of course they get good pay; that's the first condition of good work and contentment."
"The second is good holidays," said Lawrence with a smile.
"Ah, you've just left school!" said his uncle. "But the men haven't anything to complain of on that score. They get holidays all the winter. We stop work for four or five months. What with snowstorms and the river frozen hard we could scarcely exist here in the winter months, so the men go off to their homes and no doubt play the heavy swell among their people, and I betake myself to Bokhara, or pay a round of visits among my Chinese friends, or go on a hunting trip, returning in the spring. But there's the bugle; come and see me in my part of unpaid magistrate. Then I'll take you over the place."
On leaving the house, the boys saw a number of men filing through the gate between two ranks of tall bearded Sikhs armed with rifles. Those who came first were of the Mongolian type, with broad, flat, yellowish faces, wide noses and narrow eyes. What little clothing they wore was ragged and stained a deep indigo blue. These men, numbering about eighty, formed a group on the left-hand side. After them entered more than a score of swarthy black-haired fellows of more symmetrical shape and more powerful physique, their features more sharply cut, some of them having almost a Jewish cast of countenance. Their garments were marked with streaks and stains of yellowish-green. Mr. Appleton explained that they were for the most part Pathans from the Afghan border; but they included also several Punjabis, a couple of Baluchis, three or four Chitralis, and a sprinkling of men of Hunza and Nagar. They formed up on the right-hand side.