Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/140



“If, when I was young and my heart had never a crack, a man such as thou, Al Nakia, had whispered words of passion in my ear, I would have told him to first fill his gullet with rich meats, and then I would have said to him …”—something decidedly improper which sent everybody, including the princess and half-a-dozen stray Calcutta natives of various castes and complexions, into fits of riotous, Asiatic laughter; and Hector himself joined—was rather glad of it, in fact, for it proved that these people had accepted him as one of their own, that to them he was not the saheb who must be kowtowed to in public and cruelly, mercilessly derided and parodied in private.

Then a wave of excitement, inside the station, while they squabbled with the railway porters and guards and ticket punchers over baggage and ice and bedding and hubble-bubbles and baskets of food and goglets of water and a number of mysterious, strongly scented packages, which the railway officials declared could under no circumstances be stowed away into the “te-rain, the valuable property of the honorable saheb-log's railway company—no, no!—under no conditions whatsoever!” while the Tamerlani servants swore by all the Saints of Shia Islam and by a variety of rather more worldly oaths that, come what may, everything would be stowed away where they could see it.

“For we know well you thieving, lousy Southern piglings—you eaters of unclean abominations—you cursed worshipers of a flower and a ring-tailed monkey! You could steal food from between our lips, and our insides would be none the wiser! Away, spawn of leprous gutter rats, indelicate, especially unbeautiful,