Scott's ankle. 'They will kill me here. I do not know these
people.'

'I say,' said Scott, in broken Tamil, 'I say, she will do you no
harm. Go with her and be well fed.'

'Come!' said William, panting, with a wrathful glance at Scott, who
stood helpless and, as it were, hamstrung.

'Go back,' said Scott quickly to William. 'I'll send the little
chap over in a minute.'

The tone of authority had its effect, but in a way Scott did not
exactly intend. The boy loosened his grasp, and said with gravity,
'I did not know the woman was thine. I will go.' Then he cried to
his companions, a mob of three-, four-, and five-year-olds waiting
on the success of his venture ere they stampeded: 'Go back and eat.
It is our man's woman. She will obey his orders.'

Jim collapsed where he sat; Faiz Ullah and the two policemen grinned;
and Scott's orders to the cartmen flew like hail.

'That is the custom of the Sahibs when truth is told in their
presence,' said Faiz Ullah. 'The time comes that I must seek new
service. Young wives, especially such as speak our language and have
knowledge of the ways of the Police, make great trouble for honest
butlers in the matter of weekly accounts.'

What William thought of it all she did not say, but when her brother,
ten days later, came to camp for orders, and heard of Scott's
performances, he said, laughing: 'Well, that settles it. He'll be
_Bakri_ Scott to the end of his days' (_Bakri_, in the northern
vernacular, means a goat). 'What a lark! I'd have given a month's pay
to have seen him nursing famine babies. I fed some with _conjee_
[rice-water], but that was all right.'

'It's perfectly disgusting,' said his sister, with blazing eyes. 'A
man does something like--like that--and all you other men think of is
to give him an absurd nickname, and then you laugh and think it's
funny.'

'Ah,' said Mrs. Jim, sympathetically.

'Well, _you_ can't talk, William. You christened little Miss Demby
the Button-quail last cold weather; you know you did. India's the
land of nicknames.'

That's different,' William replied. 'She was only a girl, and she
hadn't done anything except walk like a quail, and she _does_. But it
isn't fair to make fun of a man.'

'Scott won't care,' said Martyn. 'You can't get a rise out of old
Scotty. I've been trying for eight years, and you've only known him
for three. How does he look?'

'He looks very well,' said William, and went away with a flushed
cheek. '_Bakri