be! And we have to leave them among strangers."

"Punch is a cheery little chap. He's sure to make friends wherever he
goes."

"And who could help loving my Ju?"

They were standing over the cots in the nursery late at night, and I
think that Mamma was crying softly. After Papa had gone away, she
knelt down by the side of Judy's cot. The ayah saw her and put up a
prayer that the memsahib might never find the love of her children
taken away from her and given to a stranger.

Mamma's own prayer was a slightly illogical one. Summarized it ran:
"Let strangers love my children and be as good to them as I should be,
but let me preserve their love and their confidence for ever and ever.
Amen." Punch scratched himself in his sleep, and Judy moaned a little.
That seems to be the only answer to the prayer: and, next day, they
all went down to the sea, and there was a scene at the Apollo Bunder
when Punch discovered that Meeta could not come too, and Judy learned
that the ayah must be left behind. But Punch found a thousand
fascinating things in the rope, block, and steam-pipe line on the big
P. and O. Steamer, long before Meeta and the ayah had dried their
tears.

"Come back, Punch-baba," said the ayah.

"Come back," said Meeta, "and be a Burra Sahib."

"Yes," said Punch, lifted up in his father's arms to wave good-bye.
"Yes, I will come back, and I will be a Burra Sahib Bahadur!"

At the end of the first day Punch demanded to be set down in England,
which he was certain must be close at hand. Next day there was a merry
breeze, and Punch was very sick. "When I come back to Bombay," said
Punch on his recovery, "I will come by the road--in a broom-gharri.
This is a very naughty ship."

The Swedish boatswain consoled him, and he modified his opinions as
the voyage went on. There was so much to see and to handle and ask
questions about that Punch nearly forgot the ayah and Meeta and the
hamal, and with difficulty remembered a few words of the Hindustani
once his second-speech.

But Judy was much worse. The day before the steamer reached
Southampton, Mamma asked her if she would not like to see the ayah
again. Judy's blue eyes turned to the stretch of sea that had
swallowed all her tiny past, and she said: "Ayah! What ayah?"

Mamma cried over her, and Punch marveled. It was then that he heard
for the first time Mamma's passionate appeal to him never to let Judy
forget Mamma. Seeing that Judy was young, ridiculously youn