ed excursions into the compound, no uncensored
picture-books, no juggling snake-charmers.... Yet it _must_ come,
sooner or later.

Would it ruin his life?

Anyhow, he must never return to India when he grew up, or go to any
snake-producing country, unless he could be cured.

Would it make him that awful thing--a coward?

Would it grow and wax till it dominated his mind--drive him mad?

Would succeeding attacks, following encounters with picture or
reality, progressively increase in severity?

_Her_ boy in an asylum?

No. He was exaggerating an almost expected consequence that might
never be repeated--especially if the child were most carefully and
gradually reintroduced to the present terror. Later though--much later
on.

Meanwhile, wait and hope: hope and wait....

CHAPTER III.

THE SNAKE APPEARS.

The European child who grows up in India, if only to the age of six or
seven years, grows under a severe moral, physical, and mental
handicap.

However wise, devoted, and conscientious its parents may be, the evil
is great, and remains one of the many heavy costs (or punishments) of
Empire.

When the child has no mother and an indifferent father, life's
handicap is even more severe.

By his sixth birthday (the regiment being still in Bimariabad owing to
the prevalence of drought, famine, and cholera elsewhere) Damocles de
Warrenne, knowing the Urdu language and _argot_ perfectly, knew, in
theory also, more of evil, in some directions, than did his own
father.

If the child who grows up absolutely straight-forward, honest,
above-board and pure in thought, word, and deed, in England, deserves
commendation, what does the child deserve who does so in India?

Understanding every word they spoke to one another, the training he
got from native servants was one of undiluted evil and a series of
object-lessons in deceit, petty villainy, chicanery, oppression,
lying, dishonesty, and all immorality. And yet--thanks to his equal
understanding of the words and deeds of Nurse Beaton, Major Decies,
Lieutenant Ochterlonie, his father, the Officers of the Regiment, and
the Europeans of the station--he had a clear, if unconscious,
understanding that what was customary for native servants was neither
customary nor possible for Sahibs....

But he knew too much....

He knew what percentage of his or her pay each servant had to hand to
the "butler-sahib" monthly--or lose his or her place through false
accusation