“And whose memsahib [lady] was thy aunt?” said Adam, with the mango-stone in his fist. We began to laugh again.
“But here,” said Strickland, pulling his face together, “is a very bad child who has caused his father to lose his honour before all the Policemen of the Punjab.”
“Oh, they know,” said Adam. “It was only for the sake of show that they caught people. Assuredly they all knew it was benowti [make-up].”
“And since when hast thou known?” said the first policeman in India to his son.
“Four days after we came here, after the woodcutter had asked Beshakl after the health of his head. Beshakl all but slew one of them at the bad-water place.”
“If thou hadst spoken then, time and money and trouble to me and to others had all been spared. Baba, thou hast done a wrong greater than thy knowledge, and thou hast put me to shame, and set me out upon false words, and broken my honour. Thou hast done very wrong. But perhaps thou didst not think?”
“Nay, but I did think. Father, my honour was lost when that beating of me happened in Juma’s presence. Now it is made whole again.”
And with the most enchanting smile in the world Adam climbed up on to his father’s lap.
AN ENGLISH SCHOOL
Of all things in the world there is nothing, always excepting a good mother, so worthy of honour as a good school. Our School was created for the sons of officers in the Army and Navy, and filled with boys who meant to follow their father’s calling.