Page:Between the twilights being studies of Indian women by one of themselves (IA betweentwilights00soraiala).pdf/177

Rh I assure you—and one clinging to leg and hand as I walked downstairs.

But joy was at the full when I invited them to come and see me. The hour fixed was at a distance of a week, and every day I was asked “has it come?” When it did come I was sitting at my window, and seeing the Raj carriage and pair, with all its pomp of liveried attendants, dash up the drive, I smiled to myself, thinking of the semi-nude atoms which would presently issue thence. Little did I know. The atoms, my very own Baby friends of the waist-band and necklet, were translated. At the door, hand in hand and very shy, stood two of the quaintest oddities I have ever seen—my Babies, sure enough, but dressed as English widows, crêpe veil and all, with long false curls of rusty black hair adown their poor little black-gowned backs. Oh! but how I laughed! And they stood by, rueful and disappointed, while I stripped them, even to their natural clothing.

“Then the Miss Sahib loved not the English clothes; nor” (with a gasp of wonder) “the hair of another.”

“No! No!”