"It does not go at all," said Lalun, without turning her head. "They have ordered the 118th to go in its stead. That Regiment goes to Lucknow in three months, unless they give a fresh order." "That is so," said Wali Dad without a shade of doubt. "Can you, with your telegrams and your newspapers, do better? Always hearing and telling some new thing," he went on. "My friend, has your God ever smitten a European nation for gossiping in the bazars? India has gossiped for centuries--always standing in the bazars until the soldiers go by. Therefore--you are here to-day instead of starving in your own country, and I am not a Muhammadan--I am a Product--a Demnition Product. That also I owe to you and yours: that I cannot make an end to my sentence without quoting from your authors." He pulled at the _huqa_ and mourned, half feelingly, half in earnest, for the shattered hopes of his youth. Wali Dad was always mourning over something or other--the country of which he despaired, or the creed in which he had lost faith, or the life of the English which he could by no means understand. Lalun never mourned. She played little songs on the _sitar_, and to hear her sing, "_O Peacock, cry again_," was always a fresh pleasure. She knew all the songs that have ever been sung, from the war-songs of the South that make the old men angry with the young men and the young men angry with the State, to the love-songs of the North where the swords whinny-whicker like angry kites in the pauses between the kisses, and the Passes fill with armed men, and the Lover is torn from his Beloved and cries, _Ai, Ai, Ai!_ evermore. She knew how to make up tobacco for the _huqa_ so that it smelled like the Gates of Paradise and wafted you gently through them. She could embroider strange things in gold and silver, and dance softly with the moonlight when it came in at the window. Also she knew the hearts of men, and the heart of the City, and whose wives were faithful and whose untrue, and more of the secrets of the Government Offices than are good to be set down in this place. Nasiban, her maid, said that her jewelry was worth ten thousand pounds, and that, some night, a thief would enter and murder her for its possession; but Lalun said that all the City would tear that thief limb from limb, and that he, whoever he was, knew it. So she took her _sitar_ and sat in the windowseat and sang a song of old days that had been sung by a girl of her profession in an armed camp on the eve of a great battle--the day before the Fords of the Jumna ran red and Sivaji fled fifty miles to Delhi with a Toorkh stallion at his horse's tail and another Lalun on his saddle-bow. It was what men call a Mahratta _Laonee_, and it said: Their warrior forces Chimnajee Before the Peishwa led, The Children of the Sun and Fire Behind him turned and fled. And the chorus said: