say. Certainly it was good cloth, of a pretty colour, and well
made, but even to Tooni, Sonny Sahib looked queer. Abdul had no
opinion, except about the price. He grumbled at that, but then he
had grumbled steadily for two years, yet whenever Tooni proposed
that they should go and find the captain-sahib, had said no, it was
far, and he was an old man. Tooni should go when he was dead.

Besides, Abdul liked to hear the little fellow call him 'Bap,'
which meant 'Father,' and to feel his old brown finger clasped by
small pink and white ones, as he and Sonny Sahib toddled into the
bazar together. He liked to hear Sonny Sahib's laugh, too; it was
quite a different laugh from any other boy's in Rubbulgurh, and it
came oftener. He was a merry little fellow, blue-eyed, with very
yellow wavy hair, exactly, Tooni often thought, like his mother's.






CHAPTER III





It was a grief to Tooni, who could not understand it; but Sonny
Sahib perversely refused to talk in his own tongue. She did all
she could to help him. When he was a year old she cut an almond in
two, and gave half to Sonny Sahib and half to the green parrot that