which water dripped; her
skirt was splashed; her blouse and hair were in disarray.

"There is none, _huzur_," said the _bearer_ in Hindustani. "Hourly is it
expected from Muktiarbad, but as yet it is not in sight."

"What is he saying?" she cried vaguely in her distress, refusing to
believe that there was none, which the corroborating action of a hand
had implied.

"No ice got it, Memsahib," volunteered the _khansaman_ in his best
English, learned from a teacher in the Station bazaar. "All
finish--melting fast--making saw-dust one porridge."

"No ice?--my God! My child will die if I cannot have ice." She
disappeared within the tent, wringing her hands, leaving the servants to
hold council together on what was the best course to pursue.

"Without doubt the little one is in a fit," ventured the cook. "Such is
sometimes the case when the teeth press their way through the gums."

"What folly," sneered the _khansaman_, "when the infant is barely three
months old!"

"Without doubt it is a fit," the cook repeated, "else why the hot bath?
Such is the treatment the doctor-_babu_ ordered for the son of Amir
Khan, my relative in Benares when, from fever, his eyes fixed and his
limbs grew rigid."

"Thou speakest true words," said the waterman approaching the group in
visible excitement. "To see the limbs twisting and the eyes strained
upward turns my stomach. Assuredly it will die--and the master
away!--_ai ma!_--what a calamity!"

"It will die, and we shall all be blamed because there was no ice,"
sighed the _bearer_ feeling the weight of his responsibility.

"God send that he be even now returning," prayed the _khansaman_
devoutly. "The sun has long set, and any moment he may be here, for who
can shoot a leopard in the dark?"

"Tell Hosain to drive the _hawa-ghari_[4] quickly to the Station for the
doctor and the ice. If he meet not the ice cart on the road, let him
borrow all they will lend him at the houses of the sahibs," said the
cook. "_Jhut!_--lose no time. In these illnesses the life of a child is
as the flicker of a candle. A breath, and it is out; and once dead, who
can restore it to life again?"

[Footnote 4: Motor-car.]

Servants ran to do his bidding while he returned to his pots and pans,
anxious lest the roast should burn at the bottom of the pan, and the
soup boil over.

"For what dost thou concern thyself?" jeered an old watchman who stood a
spectator of the scene. "All that thou cookest will be