He had it on his heart too, because he was a father; and because, despite a mother and milk, doctors and dosing galore, it was not two months since he had seen his first-born waste away mysteriously to death, as children will waste.
So his mind was full of it, when, for the sake of seeing a lonely wife and mother, he rode forty miles after nightfall to the little bungalow so empty of a child's voice.
"I've got quite a nursery of 'em now," he said grimly, "but they beat me. I can't get the men in charge to mix that tin-milk stuff right, you know, and the little beggars won't look at a teaspoon."
Perhaps it was his ride that had tired him. Anyhow, he crossed his hands on the table, and laid his head on them wearily.
He roused, however, at her touch on his shoulder.
"Let me come," she said; "I've--I've nothing to do here."
He looked at her for a moment, then turned his eyes away. "Will you?" he said in an odd voice; "that--that will be awfully jolly."
So in a day or two, armed with the dead baby's bottles, feeding-cups, God knows what, and such mother's lore as the dead child had taught her, she was at work in a white tent set in the shade of the only tree at Chotia Aluwala.
"I must have more milk," she said decidedly, and there was a new light in her eyes, a new tone in her voice, when they brought her yet another whimpering black baby. "That is the end of it; by hook or by crook I _must_ have more milk. There _must_ be some, somewhere. Send out and see!"
So, because when a woman is standing between death and children, her orders are the orders of "She-who-must-be-obeyed," they sent. And, of course, one of the first discoveries made by the native underling to whom the inquiry was entrusted, was Surâbhi. In other words, that an old Brahmin, in receipt actually of relief, was the possessor of a remarkably fine cow, if not in full milk, yet capable of supporting an infant or two. It needs the vicious _flair_ of an underpaid _chuprassi_ to find such chances for tyranny and extortion at the first throw off. But this one was found, and when Gopi returned that evening to the little courtyard, an official with a brass _lotah_ was waiting for milk. It would be paid for, of course, by-and-by. Gopi could keep an account, and the _Sirkar_ no doubt would pay, provided the _proper official_ certified it by a countersign.