d
his mother's eyes shining through the dusk called on me to adore it. I
kicked Stalky on the shin. One must not mock a young man's first love or
loyalty.

A lump of raw cotton appeared on the table.

"I thought there might be a need. Therefore I packed it between our
shirts," said the voice of Imam Din.

"Does he know as much English as that?" cried the Infant, who had
forgotten his East.

We all admired the cotton for Adam's sake, and, indeed, it was very long
and glossy.

"It's--it's only an experiment," he said. "We're such awful paupers we
can't even pay for a mailcart in my District. We use a biscuit-box
on two bicycle wheels. I only got the money for that"--he patted the
stuff--"by a pure fluke."

"How much did it cost?" asked Strickland.

"With seed and machinery--about two hundred pounds. I had the labour
done by cannibals."

"That sounds promising." Stalky reached for a fresh cigarette.

"No, thank you," said Agnes. "I've been at Weston-super-Mare a little
too long for cannibals. I'll go to the music-room and try over next
Sunday's hymns."

She lifted the boy's hand lightly to her lips, and tripped across the
acres of glimmering floor to the music-room that had been the Infant's
ancestors' banqueting hall. Her grey and silver dress disappeared under
the musicians' gallery; two electrics broke out, and she stood backed
against the lines of gilded pipes.

"There's an abominable self-playing attachment here!" she called.

"Me!" the Infant answered, his napkin on his shoulder. "That's how I
play Parsifal."

"I prefer the direct expression. Take it away, Ipps."

We heard old Ipps skating obediently all over the floor.

"Now for the direct expression," said Stalky, and moved on the Burgundy
recommended by the faculty to enrich fever-thinned blood.

"It's nothing much. Only the belt of cotton-soil my chief showed me
ran right into the Sheshaheli country. We haven't been able to prove
cannibalism against that tribe in the courts; but when a Sheshaheli
offers you four pounds of woman's breast, tattoo marks and all, skewered
up in a plantain leaf before breakfast, you--"

"Naturally burn the villages before lunch," said Stalky.

Adam shook his head. "No troops," he sighed. "I told my Chief about it,
and he said we must wait till they chopped a white man. He advised me if
ever I felt like it not to commit a--a barren felo de se, but to let the
Sheshaheli do it. Then he could report, and then we co