Then a silence, save for the twitterings of birds and the soft thud of a peepul fig falling, rifled, to the ground, until the bullocks were back to the old spot. Then it began again--
If there was no place like home, Sonny baba evidently did not think so. Anyhow, he had left it. Had disappeared utterly in that luxuriant little world down by the big canal, which was a maze of sunlight and shadow, of thickets of sweet lime and groves of date-palms interspersed with patches of tomatoes and gourds, and plantations of pomegranates laden with leaf and flower and fruit--such ugly, ill-humoured fruit, after all that beauty of blossom!
Yes, he was gone, and the solitary bungalow a mile up the road, nearer the city, where the assistant commissioner in charge of the subdivision lived, was in a lethargy of despair; for a child means much when it has been waited for during long years. Every one, from the highest to the lowest, was away searching; save only for the mother walking up and down the pretty drawing-room clasping her hands tighter and tighter as the hours went by, and the _ayah_, numb with grief and remorse, in the dust outside. It was growing late. The sun sent its picture of the _shisham_-trees to decorate the blank side wall of the house; the wilderness of wild petunia, usurping the place of the fast-yielding English annuals, began to send out a faint perfume. And Sonny had been out all day alone, under the hot sun, among the treacherous canal-cuts and the lurking snakes--Sonny, who since his birth, three years ago, had never known what it was to be alone.
It was a sweet little voice full of liquid labials. The _ayah_ gave an inarticulate skirl of joy as she sprang from the dust.
"Leave me l'alone, l'_ayah_--I'th all light. Puth me down now, pleath, man."
A cry came from within, a woman's figure came flying to the veranda, a child bubbling over with glee went flying to meet it and bury a little mop of golden curls in mother's dress.
Then, after a time, with dignity: "Don'th, pleath; them kitheth hurth. And, Mummie, don'th l'oo hear?--he'th got 'quilth.' Oh! l'ever tho many 'quilth.'--Hathn't l'oo, man?"
The man was Shah Sujah's mouse. He stood as he had set the child down, obedient to Heaven knows what understanding of the little voice. Now he seemed to hear nothing as he looked serenely, almost brightly, at those three out of his large soft eyes.