"Will my lord grant his servant's prayer?"
"What do you mean?" I said, rather testily, for his excessive humility
worried me. I hated to be worshipped like that. "Not tell the rajah
about the snakes?"
"If my master the rajah knows, thy servant may be slain."
"What! for that?" I said.
"Yes, my lord. His highness bade me take as great care of your life as
I would of my own. Thy servant has tried to do his duty, and serve my
lord. He has done everything the great physician, the rajah's own
doctor, bade him do, and cared for my lord as if he had been thy
servant's own son. It would be hard to die because a serpent of the
forest came in after seeing the light."
"Hard? Yes," I said quietly. "There, mind no more of the brutes get
in. I shall not say a word to the rajah or any one else."
"Ah," he cried joyfully. And before I could remove it, he had gone down
on his knees and kissed my hand. "Thy servant goes back with joy in his
heart. He did not love to serve him, for the white sahibs are cruel to
their servants, and are hated; but they are not all so, and thy servant
seeth now why his master the rajah loveth my lord, and careth for him as
one who is very dear."
"How I do hate for any one to fawn upon me like that!" I said to myself
as soon as I was alone and I lay thinking about all my troubles, and
being a prisoner, wondering how long it would be before I was strong
again and able to escape; for I meant to do that. It was very pleasant
to find that Ny Deen liked me, and recalled my civility to him
sufficiently to make him wish to save my life; but all the same, I felt
that I did not like him, for there was the treachery of a man who had
come under false pretences to our cantonments, waiting, with others in
his secret, for the time when they could throw off the British yoke.
And as I lay thinking, though I felt ready to acquit him of the
atrocities that had been committed, I felt that he had opened the awful
door and let loose the tide of miscreants who had raged through the
cities, murdering every one whose skin was white.
"No," I thought, "whatever cause Ny Deen and his people might have had
for retaliation, it had not been by an open declaration of war, but by
treachery." And then I went to sleep, to dream about snakes.