Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/236

 : "Go back and eat. It is our man's woman. She will obey his orders."

Jim collapsed where he sat; Faiz Ullah and the two policemen grinned; and Scott's orders to the cartmen flew like hail.

"That is the custom of the Sahibs when truth is told in their presence," said Faiz Ullah. "The time comes that I must seek new service. Young wives, especially such as speak our language and have knowledge of the ways of the Police, make great trouble for honest butlers in the matter of weekly accounts." What William thought of it all she did not say, but when her brother, ten days later, came to camp for orders, and heard of Scott's performances, he said, laughing: "Well, that settles it. He 'll be Bakri Scott to the end of his days." (Bakri, in the Northern vernacular, means a goat.) "What a lark! I 'd have given a month's pay to have seen him nursing famine babies. I fed some with conjee [rice-water], but that was all right."

"It 's perfectly disgusting," said his sister, with blazing eyes. " A man does something like—like that—and all you other men think of is to give him an absurd nickname, and then you laugh and think it 's funny."

"All," said Mrs. Jim, sympathetically.

"Well, you can't talk, William. You christened little Miss Demby the Button-quail, last cold weather; you know you did. India 's the land of nicknames."

"That 's different," William replied. "She was only a girl, and she had n't done anything except walk like