“You sent the Nasir’s medicine this morning?” The compounder had picked up a little English from the Armenian. He said, “No, sir, I forget it.” Forget it! I was exceedingly angry. “A man’s life is in extreme danger, and you _forget_!” Then he explained, or rather the Armenian did. When he had delivered the medicine he found the Hakim there: he left the medicine, noticing where it was placed; he returned once or twice during the day, but found the bottle just as it had been left. Not a dose was given that day or afterwards. Why, therefore, did the fat old fraud ask me to go and see his patient? I do not know. The Nasir died the next day. [Sidenote: Lessons in English.] Towards the end of September the cases of malarial fever among the soldiers and townspeople began to decrease in number, and I had more leisure. I commenced to study Persian, with the occasional assistance of Munshi Amin Ullah, secretary to the British Agent. The Armenian was not, at that time, sufficiently learned to attempt to teach me. He had very vague ideas as to moods and tenses: and pronouns and prepositions bothered him considerably. I tried to teach him English. He knew the letters, but words, whose sound and meaning he knew well, baffled him completely when written. I found this was chiefly due to the fact that when he spelt out a word he pronounced it exactly as it was spelt. “Enough” was a complete stumper, because there was no “f” in it. He considered it ought to have been “enuf,” and wished to argue the point with me; so that his English reading did not progress very rapidly. He spoke fluently in Hindustani and some of the other Indian languages, in Persian and Pushtu, and was picking up Turki while we were in Turkestan; English, too, he was becoming better acquainted with: all these he learnt by ear, but Hindustani and Persian he could both read and write. About this time I found leisure to take up painting again. Rather fancying myself in Afghan turban and robes, I painted my portrait from the reflection in a hand-glass. It happened to turn out a success, and created quite a little mild excitement. The Armenian was not the man to let my light shine under a bushel: he looked upon me as a sort of possession of his. Anything that I could do and others could not, reflected, he seemed to think, a great deal of credit upon him: so that he trumpeted the news abroad. I had a great many visitors, and every second one asked me to paint his portrait. The Armenian said: “Sir, you not do. This man, who is?” Which sentence, though it sounds odd, is simply a literal translation of the Persian, “Sahib, shuma ne kunēd. In mard, ki’st?”