"Trotters! Get back where you came from! Back, d'ye hear me! Back!"
Within ten yards of his master the dog stopped to do his thinking, and the elephant screamed with a sort of hunter's ecstasy as he closed on him with a rush. But thought is swift, and obedience good judgment. The dog doubled of a sudden between Akbar's legs and the elephant slid on his rump in the futile effort to turn after him—then crashed into the wall opposite Tripe's dismantled shed—cannoned off it with a grunt of sheer disgust—and set off up-street, once more in hot pursuit.
"That brute got my good rum, damn him!" said Tom, opening the stable door. "Hello! Horse down? Any harm done? Right-oh! We'll soon have him up again. Better hurry now—Trotters came for us."
Chapter Nine
So many look at the color,
So many study design,
Some of 'em squint through a microscope
To judge if the texture is fine.
A few give a thought to the price of the stuff,
Some feel of the heft in the hand,
But once in a while there is one who can smile
And—appraising the lot—understand.
Look out,
When the seemingly sold understand!
All's planned,
For the cook of the stew to be canned
Out o' hand,
When the due to be choused understand!
"It means, the toils are closing in on Gungadhura!"
Within the palace Tess was reveling in vaudeville In the first place, Yasmini had no Western views on modesty. Whatever her mother may have taught her in that respect had gone the way of all the other handicaps she saw fit to throw into the discard, or to retain for use solely when she saw there was advantage. The East uses dress for ornament, and understands its use. The veil is for places where men might look with too bold eyes and covet. Out of sight of privileged men prudery has no place, and almost no advocates all the way from Peshawar to Cape Comorin.
And Yasmini had loved dancing since the days when she tottered her first steps for her mother's and Bubru Singh's delight. Long before an American converted the Russian Royal Ballet, and the Russian Royal Ballet in return took all the theatre-going West by storm—scandalizing, then amazing, then educating bit by bit—Yasmini had developed her own ideas and brought them by arduous practise to something near perfection. To that her strength, agility and sinuous grace were largely due; and she practised no deceptions on herself, but valued all three qualities for their effect on other people, keeping no light under a bushel.
The consciousness of that night's climactic quality raised her spirits to the point where they were irrepressible, and she danced her garments off one by one, using each in turn as a foil for her art until there was nothing left with which to multiply rhythm and she danced before the long French mirrors yet more gracefully with nothing on at all.
Getting Tess disrobed was a different matter. She did not own to much prudery, but the maids' eyes were over-curious. And, lacking, as she knew she did, Yasmini's ability to justify nakedness by poetry of motion, she hid behind a curtain and was royally laughed at for her pains. But she was satisfied to retain that intangible element that is best named dignity, and let the laughter pass unchallenged. Yasmini, with her Eastern heritage, could be dignified as well as beautiful as nature made her. Not so Tess, or at any rate she thought not, and what one thinks is after all the only gage acceptable.