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I will give you a thousand rupees, with which you can pay your share of the expenses of the house or land; and I will give you a similar sum to hand to Ramdass, as a token of my gratitude for his protection and kindness. This will enable him to add to his holding, and to the comforts of his house.
It is not like that that you must talk English good enough for an ayah, not good enough for a sahib so we have decided, Sufder, Ramdass and I, that you must go down to Bombay, and learn to talk proper English. "We have thought much how this shall be done, and have settled that our thinking, here, is no good. I must wait till I get to Bombay, where I can get advice from people I know."
"Will you stay there with me, Soyera?" "I cannot say what will be best," she answered, gravely; "I must wait till I get there. Ramdass will go down with me. It is a good time for him to go. The harvest work is done, he can be spared for a month. He would like to go. He has never seen Bombay. We shall go in the wagon."
"And now, Soyera," Ramdass said, when he returned from his work in the evening, "tell us more about yourself. First, how did you learn where I was living?" "I learned it from the wife of our cousin Sufder." "How did you fall in with him?" "Well, I must tell you something. I had meant to keep it entirely to myself, but I know that you and Anundee will keep my secret." "Assuredly we will.
Two days later, Harry mounted a horse that Ramdass had given him, and started with Sufder for Poona. On arriving there they rode to the little camp, half a mile out of the town, where Sufder's troop was stationed. "You don't carry your tents with you, when you are on service in the field?"
Her brother laughed. "It seems to me, Soyera, that you have come to prefer these English people to your own countrymen." "I say not that, Ramdass. You asked me how I liked them, and I have told you. You yourself know how the tax collectors grind down the people; how Scindia and Holkar and the Peishwa are always fighting each other.
"Well, now let us to dinner," Ramdass broke in. "I am hungry, and want to be off again. There is much to do in the fields." The woman took a pot off the embers of a wood fire, and poured its contents into a dish. The meal consisted of a species of pulse boiled with ghee, with peppers and other condiments added. "And how did you like being among the English, Soyera?"
"But they are a mere handful," Ramdass said. "How can they think of invading a nation like ours?" "Because they know, at least they believe, that Scindia, Holkar, and the Peishwa are all so jealous of each other that they will never act together.
As a woman of the Mahrattas, I trust that day will never come; but as one who knows the English, I have my fears. Of one thing I am sure, that were they masters here, the cultivators would be vastly better off than they are at present." Ramdass laughed. "What do you think of my sister's opinions, Anundee?"
In the meantime Harry Lindsay, who was now called Puntojee, had been living quietly on the farm of Ramdass; and no suspicion whatever had been excited in the minds of the neighbours, or of any of the people of Jooneer, that he was aught but what he seemed the son of Soyera.
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