“And she keeps it wrapped up in linen, like an amulet----”
“Thou liest!” burst forth Wazira Begum furiously.
“But I saw it, O my sister, and thou didst tell me it was to make a great charm against him, to destroy him.”
“Thou wilt spoil the charm by talking of it,” pouted the girl, but the angry crimson faded from her face.
“Ask her why she hates him so much,” said Penelope to Lady Haigh, preferring to rely, as she usually did, on her friend rather than try to make herself understood in the native dialect.
“I hate all the English,” said Wazira Begum proudly, when the question was translated to her; “and he is a chief man among them.”
“But what have the English done to you?” asked Lady Haigh.
“Have they not driven us here?” with a wave of her hand round the courtyard. “Are not my brothers and the Sheikh-ul-Jabal deprived of their just rights?”
“And no marriage can be made for her,” put in Maadat Ali sympathetically. “What go-between would come to Sheikhgarh to seek a bride?”
“You should persuade your father to settle in Alibad,” said Lady Haigh.
“I am not a sweeper girl, to wed with the scum of towns!” cried Wazira Begum.
“Isn’t your sister inclined to be a little difficult to please?” asked Lady Haigh of Maadat Ali. “You are Khojas, of course, but we have plenty of Khojas, and even Syads,[1] living in the plains.”
“If that were all!” cried the girl contemptuously. “But for a princess of Nalapur, as I am----”
“Nay, I have said it, and these unbelievers shall be convinced.” She sprang up and stood before the visitors, drawing herself to her full height. “My father was the Amir Nasr Ali Khan, not the Sheikh-ul-Jabal, and my brother Ashraf Ali should now be sitting in his father’s place. But the English took the side of the murderer and usurper, and we are banished to this desert.”
“You three are Nasr Ali’s children!” cried Lady Haigh. Then, regret succeeding astonishment, “Why in the world didn’t your father--the Sheikh, I mean--let Major Keeling know this before? He would have had you back at Nalapur long ago.”
“These are words!” said Wazira Begum. “My uncle judges the English by their deeds. His own wife and sons and our mother were among the dead in the Killa at Nalapur, and he would not have us murdered also.”