Project Gutenberg's The Story of Sonny Sahib, by Sara Jeannette Duncan

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Title: The Story of Sonny Sahib

Author: Sara Jeannette Duncan

Posting Date: August 8, 2009 [EBook #4547]
Release Date: October, 2003
First Posted: February 7, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF SONNY SAHIB ***

Produced by Don Lainson and Charles Aldarondo. HTML version
by Al Haines.

THE STORY OF SONNY SAHIB

By

MRS. EVERARD COTES

(SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN)

1894

CHAPTER I

'Ayah,' the doctor-sahib said in the vernacular, standing beside
the bed, 'the fever of the mistress is like fire. Without doubt
it cannot go on thus, but all that is in your hand to do you have
done. It is necessary now only to be very watchful. And it will
be to dress the mistress, and to make everything ready for a
journey. Two hours later all the sahib-folk go from this place in
boats, by the river, to Allahabad. I will send an ox-cart to take
the mistress and the baby and you to the bathing ghat.'

'Jeldi karo!' he added, which meant 'Quickly do!'--a thing people
say a great many times a day in India.

The ayah looked at him stupidly. She was terribly frightened; she
had never been so frightened before. Her eyes wandered from the
doctor's face to the ruined south wall of the hut, where the sun of
July, when it happens to shine on the plains of India, was beating
fiercely upon the mud floor. That ruin had happened only an hour
ago, with a terrible noise just outside, such a near and terrible
noise that she, Tooni, had scrambled under the bed the mistress was
lying on, and had hidden there until the doctor-sahib came and
pulled her forth by the foot, and called her a poor sort of person.
Then Tooni had lain down at the doctor-sahib's feet, and tried to
place one of them upon her head, and said that indeed she was not a
worthless one, but that she was very old and she feared the guns;
so many of the sahibs had died from the guns! She, Tooni, did not
wish to die from a gun, and would the Presence, in the great mercy
of his heart, tell her whether there would be any more shoot