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xible at the wrist, and seemingly perfectly boneless, she placed on my knee, and looking up straight at me, she lisped, softly, "Ashik karti," or "I love you," to show me she too could speak Hindustani.
I looked down on her with a smile. The idea of love seemed to me ludicrous. What could I do with this little atom of doll-like, child-like life? But I smiled upon her as one does on a pretty child asking for a kiss.
"Now, which will the sahib, who is lord of all the virtues, decide upon Nanee or Lalee?" asked the old woman, in a business-like tone.
I saw it was time to negative the matter at once, and I said, decidedly:
"I am not in want of a wife, and I have no intention of taking one."
The old woman fell back, sitting on her heels, and stared at me blankly.
"But, sahib, protector of the poor, you are here for five years; no white woman at all in Lihuli, no woman allowed in bazaar! What will you do?"
Five years! So she knew the exact length of my appointment, probably the amount of my salary and private income to an anna. They know everything, these people. I looked up and saw, standing just inside my door, patiently waiting till the market should be concluded, a clerk with a long strip of paper and a bundle of reed pens in his hands. His duty was to make out the agreement between us, and give me a receipt for any money paid on account.
"I don't know," I said, abruptly. "When I want a wife I will send for one. I don't want one now. I have spoken."
"Let the sahib think once more. He may look from one end of Lihuli to the other and he will not find such buds from the garden of Paradise as these again."
I glanced at the buds of Paradise and saw that their little faces had grown sad and wistful as they heard my decision.
"They are beautiful beyond comparison," I said to reassure them, and perhaps save them from the old woman's wrath; "but I have no need them. If I had, there are none I could wish better."
"Well," muttered the old woma