"Go!" commented Sonny's mother, when, moved by a vague feeling that Bisrâm meant well, his master handed on his request to the real authority. "Certainly not. I wonder he has the face to ask for leave when Sonny--I mean Harry--is down with fever. Not that it is anything, the doctor says, but a passing attack. Still, I am not going to run any risks with a strange servant. Go, indeed! It shows what his pretended devotion is worth--" "Surely, my dear, he _is_ devoted--" "Oh, very! in his way. But really you spoil Bisra, Edward. Just because he can tell you things about those horrid gods and goddesses. Do you know, I really think of getting an English nurse for the child until I have--until I have to take him home," interrupted his wife, her initial sharpness of tone softening over the inevitable certainty of separation which clouds Indian motherhood. "It cannot be right to let him live in such an atmosphere of superstition and ignorance." The magistrate, who was leaving the room, had paused at her remark about the nurse as he might have paused before a painful scene. "By Jove!" he murmured as if to himself, "I believe it would break the man's heart. I often wonder what on earth he'll do when the child has--to go home." The inevitable lent a tremor to the father's voice also. But Bisrâm, despite the former's belief, spoke of the same separation quite calmly when, the very next morning the doctor coming early, found his little patient in the verandah getting the advantage of the fresh, bright air in Bisra's arms. "When," asked the latter, calmly, but with that slow pathetic anxiety in his eyes, "was Harry-_sahib_ going across the black water?" "You think he ought to go?" said the doctor. "Why?" "This slave does not think; he knows! The little master must go--go at once," replied the man, still calmly, though he held the child to him with a visibly closer strain. "The _Huzoor_ himself knows how bad Hindustan is for the little ones. He must go, _Huzoor_, before he gets worse." "But he is not going to get worse," said the doctor, kindly. "He is better already, and if he has another bout of fever his mother has promised to take him to the hills, so don't distress yourself." Bisrâm's dark eyes looked wistfully into the doctor's. "The hills? That would be worse. That would be nearer the evil. He must go far from Hindustan at once, _Huzoor_; and if you tell the _mem_ this she will go--she will not mind." "And you, Bisra?" asked the doctor, curiously. The man's eyes flinched, but he never stirred a muscle under the blow. "I am only the little master's bearer, _Huzoor_. He will not need one much longer: he grows big."