"Boppery bopp!" he exclaimed, presently, "but this bores us. Is there no better fun? Let us have a quail-fight, Khan."
The Khan rose to order in the quails. The King gazed on Nuna with languid satiety.
"I wonder how she would look, Europe-fashion."
"Nothing is easier, Sire, than to see how she would look," said the
Khan, as he returned with the quails.
So a gown, and other articles of European female attire, were sent for to the Khan's house; for he was a married man; and when they were brought, Nuna was told to retire and put them on. The quail-fight proceeded on the table.
Then Nuna reappeared in her new costume. A more miserable transformation it is hardly possible to imagine. The clothes hung loosely about her, in forlorn dowdyness. She felt that she was ridiculous. All grace was gone, all beauty. It was distressing to witness her mortified plight.
The King and the Khan laughed heartily, while scalding tears coursed down poor Nuna's cheeks. The other nautch-girls, jealous, had no pity for her; they chuckled at her disgrace, turning up their pretty noses, as they whispered,—"Serve her right,—the brazen minx!"
For days, nay, for weeks, did poor Nuna thus appear, a laughing-stock. She implored permission to leave the court, and return to her wretched home in Cashmere; but that was refused. In the midst of the Mohurrim, she suddenly disappeared. There were none to inquire for her.[1]
[Footnote 1: Private Life of an Eastern King.]
Oh, they may say what they please about the irresistible march of civilization, and clearing the way for Webster's Spelling-Book,—about pumps for Afric's sunny fountains, and Fulton ferry-boats for India's coral strand; but there's nothing in what the Atlantic Cable gives, like that it takes away from the heart of the man who has looked the Sphinx in the face and dreamed with the Brahmin under his own banian. Spare the shrinking Nunas of our poetry your Europe-fashions!