"Oh! but we can't do that!" announced the peevish high-pitched voice.
"Why not?"
"Ma says we're not to be with her alone. There's all sorts of weird tales going round about her. Thought you knew. They say she killed her first husband, and tried to stab someone in Calcutta with that dagger she wears in her hair; that she lives on the q.t. with a native—he gave her that gorgeous necklace of pink pearls; has been seen with him in the compound after dark—Ma watched—and she's positively dotty at the full moon. Fact! Mrs. Oswald told Ma that there's no doubt that she's quite mad at times."
The blonde slid her slightly bowed, silken-hosed limbs to the ground, her face the colour of greenish putty through the superstitions of one half of her forbears.
"Let's go and find your ma!" said she. "It's full moon to-night."
And after their departure Leonie sat very still on the edge of the bed, with one foot tucked under her, and the other bare and very perfect stretched down to the matting; the netting fell in folds behind her, and her eyes stared into the corner where a one time nameless, unshaped spook, having taken form and name at last, stood mouthing at her from the shadows.
She started violently and looked down when her body-woman touched the arched instep with her wrinkled, dusky hand.
Keenly intuitive, as are all the peoples of India, she had crept noiselessly across the matting and crouched at Leonie's feet in her desire to be near the beloved child in her distress.
There was a heaven of love and a world of indecision in the monkey eyes, but not a trace of fear when the beloved child suddenly twisted the sari from about the sleek head and pock-marked face and shook her violently by the shoulder. Instead she rocked herself gently to and fro, crooning in the toneless cracked voice of the native woman who tends a white child and loves it.
"Missy—baba, it's ayah!" went the tuneless song, "it's ayah—it's ayah—be not afraid, baba—baba—it's ayah—ayah—ayah."