other alcoholic draught. On such broken meals Baby is raised.

The little drawn face, etiolated and weary-looking, recommends sleep;
but Baby is a bad sleeper. The Bearer-in-waiting carries about a small
pillow all day long, and from time to time Baby is applied to it. He
frets and cries, and they brood over him humming some old Indian song,
["Keli Blai," or "Hillu Milli Pania"]. Still he turns restlessly and
whimpers, though they pat him and shampoo him, and call him fond names
and tell him soothing stories of bulbuls and flowers and woolly sheep.
But Baby does not sleep, and even Indian patience is exhausted. Both
Ayah and Bearer would like to slip away to their mud houses at the
other end of the compound and have a pull at the fragrant _huqqa_ and
a gossip with the _saices;_[Q] but while _Sunny Baba_ is at large, and
might at any moment make a raid on Mamma, who is dozing over a novel
on a spider-chair near the mouth of the thermantidote, the Ayah and
Bearer dare not leave their charge. So _Sunny Baba_ must sleep, and
the Bearer has in the folds of his waist-cloth a little black fragment
of the awful sleep-compeller, and Baby is drugged into a deep uneasy
sleep of delirious, racking dreams.

Day by day Baby grows paler, day by day thinner, day by day a stranger
light burns in his bonny eyes. Weird thoughts sweep through Baby's
brain, weird questions startle Mamma out of the golden languors in
which she is steeped, weird words frighten the gentle Ayah as she
fondles her darling. The current of babble and laughter has almost
ceased to flow. Baby lies silent in the Ayah's lap staring at the
ceiling. He clasps a broken toy with wasted fingers. His Bearer comes
with some old watchword of fun; Baby smiles faintly, but makes no
response. The old man takes him tenderly in his arms and carries him
to the verandah; Baby's head falls heavily on his shoulder.