“Where does he propose to send them?” Ommony asked, a wave of rebellion sweeping over him. He was well schooled in self-control, but all the English in him rose against the notion of his sister’s child being subject to an Oriental’s whim. Education was one thing: heritage another.
Hannah Sanburn laughed. The expression of her face was firm, and yet peculiarly helpless.
“I am not to tell you that.”
“Why in thunder not? You have told so much, that—”
“If you were as used as I am, Cottswold, to trusting that grand old Lama, and always discovering afterward that his advice was good, you wouldn’t press the point.”
“My sister’s child—” he began angrily; but she interrupted him.
“Don’t forget: Tsiang Samdup saved the mother from death at the hands of savages. It is thanks to him, and to nobody but him, that the baby was born alive.”
“Yes, but—”
“Tsiang Samdup told me, and I believe him, that your sister put the new-born baby into his arms and begged him to care for it as if it were his own. She gave him the baby with her dying breath.”
“What else could she do?” asked Ommony. “Poor girl, she was—”