"Saidie, Saidie! you have no respect for me," she grumbled, getting on her feet with some difficulty. Hamilton came up, and helped to balance her as she stood.
"Your Saidie pleases me very much," he said, drawing out a pocket-book. "I want to take her away from here altogether. How much do you ask for her?"
The old woman's beady-black eyes twinkled and gleamed, and fixed on the pocket-book.
"It is not possible, Sahib," she said in a grumbling tone, "for me to part with her and her services. A girl like that with her beauty, her dancing, her singing! She will earn gold every night. Let the Sahib come here each evening if he will and take his turn with the rest. For a girl like that to go to one man alone is waste and folly."
The colour mounted to Hamilton's face. His brows contracted.
"What I have to say is this," he answered sternly and briefly, "I want this girl, and if you take her with you to some place of safety for to-night, I will come to-morrow or the next day and give you 2000 rupees for her—no more and no less. I have spoken."
"Two thousand rupees!" replied shrilly the old woman, "for Saidie, the star of the dancers, and not yet fifteen! No, Sahib, no! a Parsee will give more than that for a half hour with her."
Hamilton caught the old creature by her skinny arm:
"You waste your words talking to me," he said. "I am a police magistrate, and I can have your whole place here closed, and all of you put in prison, if I choose. The girl is willing to come with me, and I will take her and pay you well for her. You have her ready for me to-morrow night, or you go to prison—which you please." The old woman shivered at the word magistrate, and fell trembling on her knees.
"Let the Sahib have mercy! That great black brute will kill me if the police come here. I take Saidie to my house, the Sahib comes there when he will. He pays, he has her. It is all finished."