XXII. YOKED TWAIN AND TWAIN, 223 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ HAROLD’S BRIDE. --------------------- CHAPTER I HOUSE-BUILDING. “WHAT’S this?—not a coolie at work; the place a litter of bricks and dust; the pillars of the veranda not a foot high! Instead of growing upwards, they seem to grow downwards, like lighted candles. The bricks also are good for nothing—chipped, broken, katcha [only sun-dried], when I gave strict orders for pakka [baked]. Cannot a fellow be absent for a week without finding everything neglected, everything at a standstill?—Nabi Bakhsh! Nabi Bakhsh!” The call was rather angrily given, and was obeyed by a dusky, bearded man in a large dirty turban, who made an obsequious salám to Robin Hartley, after emerging from some corner where this overseer of the building works had been placidly smoking his hookah. “What has become of the coolies? have they all gone to sleep?” cried young Hartley, in Urdu more fluent than correct. “The work seems at a deadlock, and you promised that I should find the veranda finished by my return. Do you think that we are to pay you for merely looking at rubbish like this?” Robin struck one of the bricks with his heel, and broke it to pieces. The excuses of Nabi Bakhsh need not be detailed,—how there had been a religious feast, and of course the men could not work; then the grandmother of Karim had died, and of course every one had gone to the funeral. “I believe that she was the fourth grandmother that has died!” exclaimed Robin, half angrily, yet half playfully, for his wrath seldom lasted for more than a minute. “Feasts, fasts, and funerals, delays and excuses, one coolie doing nothing and another helping him to do it,—it’s hard to get work finished in India. But call the men now, and let them make up for lost time. My brother and the Mem [lady] will be here in a few days, and what will they say to a mass of confusion like this?” Nabi Bakhsh went off to call the workmen. Robin, though just off a twenty-miles walk, pulled off his jacket, and set to work himself with all the vigour which youth, health, and light spirits can give. The youth talked to himself as he laboured, being fond of soliloquizing when no one was near with whom to converse.