replied
impatiently. Put the memsahib into her clothes. Pack everything
there is, and hasten. Do you understand, foolish one?'

[2] 'Enough.'

'Very good said the ayah submissively, and watched the doctor out
of sight. Then she insisted--holding the rupees, she could
insist--that the goat-keeper should bring his goat into the hut to milk
it; there was more safety, Tooni thought, in the hut. While he
milked it Tooni sat upon the ground, hugging her knees, and
thought.

The memsahib had said nothing all this time, had known nothing.
For two days the memsahib had been, as Tooni would have said,
without sense--had lain on the bed in the corner quietly staring at
the wall, where the looking-glass hung, making no sign except when
she heard the Nana Sahib's guns. Then she sat up straight, and
laughed very prettily and sweetly. It was the salute, she thought
in her fever; the Viceroy was coming; there would be all sorts of
gay doings in the station. When the shell exploded that tore up
the wall of the hut, she asked Tooni for her new blue silk with the
flounces, the one that had been just sent out from England, and her
kid slippers with the rosettes. Tooni, wiping away her helpless
tears with the edge of her head covering, had said, 'Na, memsahib,
na!' and stroked the hot hand that pointed, and then the mistress
had forgotten again. As to the little pink baby, three days old,
it blinked and throve and slept as if it had been born in its
father's house to luxury and rejoicing.

Tooni questioned the goat-keeper; but he had seen three sahibs
killed that morning, and was stupid with fear. He did not even
know of the Nana Sahib's order that the English were to be allowed
to go away in boats; and this was remarkable, because he lived in
the bazar outside, and in the bazar people generally know what is
going to happen long before the sahibs who live in the tall white
houses do. Tooni had only her own reflections.

There would be no more shooting, and the Nana Sahib would let them
all go away in boats; that was good khaber--good news. Tooni
wondered, as she put the baby's clothes together in one bundle, and
her own few possessions together in another, whether it was to be
believed. The Nana Sahib so hated the English; had not the guns
spoken of his hate these twenty-one days? Inside the walls many
had died, but outside the walls might not all die? The doctor had
said that the Nana Sahib had written it;