The fort was soon reached. There, also, the first feeling of curiosity had passed away. A smaller crowd of dirty, bare-footed children greeted Alicia with loud, shrill cries of “Mem! Mem!” and when the upper terrace was reached, only two or three bibis made their appearance. To Alicia’s disappointment Premi was not amongst them. So little interest was shown in the lady, that Alicia resolved not to visit a zenana again on consecutive days. The bibis’ stock of questions had been exhausted, half of them had been misunderstood or unanswered; the white lady’s dress was the same which she had worn on preceding days, and she was not likely to have anything to communicate but what the Hindus did not care to hear. Sometimes disappointment is experienced by workers when the hearers who crowded round them on their first appearance dwindle away as visits are repeated. “How different is zenana-visiting from what I had pictured it to be!” thought Alicia, as she saw the women eagerly examining some new purchase which had cost a few coppers, as if it were an object of interest too absorbing to leave any room for care about the soul. “I feel as if I were trying with a small penknife to carve a statue out of granite. It seems hopeless to try to make an impression. Is it possible to make these poor heathen think of anything beyond the trifles of the day?” Alicia showed a few pictures to the children, who were somewhat more attentive than their elders, and she tried to betray no impatience when little brown fingers, just taken from a mouth half-stuffed with metai (sweets), scrabbled dirty marks on her book. Then Alicia bethought herself of her new song—_that_ might help her to gain some attention. Clear rose her voice in the translation of “Here we suffer grief and pain,” in which the cheerful tone of the melody belies the sadness of the first line. But when Alicia had begun the well-known refrain, which was, of course, in Urdu, to her astonishment a clear “Joyful, joyful, joyful!” in unmistakable English, rang from the upper roof. Alicia, startled, raised her eyes, and saw for a moment, clear against the blue sky, the unveiled head of Premi in the act of eager listening. A most un-Oriental flush was on her cheeks, a bright but bewildered expression in her eyes, as if she listened to some song from dreamland and joined in it by some irresistible impulse. In a moment the voice was silent, the head withdrawn, and Alicia remained gazing upwards, listening and wondering, asking herself whether both her senses could have at once deceived her. Then she turned to the nearest Hindu, who chanced to be Darobti, standing with her fat little boy on her hip. “Does Premi know English?” asked Alicia eagerly.