Page:Wee Willie Winkie, and other stories (1890).djvu/28

22 "Top!" said Punch, authoritatively. "Why doesn't Papa come in and say he is going to give me put-pat?"

"Punch-baba is going away," said the ayah. "In another week there will be no Punch-baba to pull my hair any more." She sighed softly, for the boy of the household was very dear to her heart.

"Up the Ghauts in a train?" said Punch, standing on his bed. "All the way to Nassick, where the Ranee-Tiger lives?"

Not to Nassick this year, little Sahib," said Meeta, lifting him on his shoulder. "Down to the sea where the cocoa-nuts are thrown, and across the sea in a big ship. Will you take Meeta with you to Belait?"

"You shall all come," said Punch, from the height of Meeta's strong arms. "Meeta and the ayah and the hamal, and Bhini-in-the-Garden, and the salaam-Captain-Sahib-snake-man."

There was no mockery in Meeta's voice when he replied—"Great is the Sahib's favour," and laid the little man down in the bed, while the ayah, sitting in the moonlight at the doorway, lulled him to sleep with an interminable canticle such as they sing in the Roman Catholic Church at Parel. Punch curled himself into a ball and slept.

Next morning Judy shouted that there was a rat in the nursery, and thus he forgot to tell her the wonderful news. It did not much matter, for Judy was only three and she would not have understood. But Punch was five; and he knew that going to England would be much nicer than a trip to Nassick.

And Papa and Mamma sold the brougham and the piano, and stripped the house and curtailed the allowance of crockery for the daily meals, and took long council together over a bundle of letters bearing the Rocklington post-mark.

"The worst of it is that one can't be certain of anything,"