Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/84

 chimed in his twin brother, governor of the western marches, stroking his scarlet beard.

“As soon lift a hand to catch Time,” Koom Khan suggested, unsmilingly.

And then laughter, while the princess turned appealingly to Ayesha Zemzem, the shriveled old nurse, whom she had raised to the rank of Zil-i-Sultana, “Shadow of the Queen.”

“Ayesha,” she said, rising, “I am sick of all this leaky-tongued clacking and twaddling and babbling. Thou art regent. Do thou tell them that, in this as in all other matters, I have decided to follow in the foot-steps of my dead father until Hajji Akhbar Khan, Itizad el-Dowleh, returns from the far places.”

“Thou art wrong, piece of my soul,” the hill woman rejoined bluntly.

“Wrong? Thou sayest that … even thou?”

Resolutely, Ayesha inclined her head.

“I love thee, little soul,” she said. “I would make my heart a floor cloth for thy white feet. But—I have thought over the matter since last we had speech with that dog of a Babu, and to-day I tell thee that thou art wrong.”

“Ayesha!” exclaimed the princess, the hot tears welling again in her eyes.

“Wrong and unwise!” stolidly repeated the other, amidst an excited chorus of assent. “Tamerlanistan is poor—and money is money.”

“Right!” agreed Gulabian, surprised as well as pleased that here was a new, and powerful, adherent of the cause of foreign “concessions.” “Money is indeed money!”