“I’m thirsty, Mammy Ellis,” she explained. Then, tired of silence, she swooped down upon the table, thrust the pen her governess had been using again into the astonished lady’s hand and said, coaxingly but imperatively: “Write--write to mamma. This gentleman does not wish to interrupt you. I will entertain him. Tell her what you think of him. And then I will read the letter, and see if it may go.” Mrs. Ellis laughed gently, and obeyed with a protest. Evidently that was the usual order of things between them. Nouna improvised herself a low seat beside the plants by piling on the floor the cushions from her American chair, then she crossed her hands round one knee, and looked up at Lauriston. “You have not told us your name,” said she diffidently. “Nouna,” protested the lady from the table. “Don’t you want to tell us your name?” “Certainly. George Lauriston.” “That is a pretty name. Mine is Nouna.” “Nouna! That is not an English name.” “Of course not. It is an Indian name. Do you like Indians?” “I have only known one West Indian lady.” “_West_ Indian! That is not Indian at all. I come from the land of the Rajahs. My grandmother was a Maharanee. She was the most beautiful woman in all India, and she wore chains of diamonds round her neck that flashed and sparkled like a thousand suns, and she lived in a marble palace that was called the Palace of Palms, where the floors glittered with gold, and soft music came like wind through the halls, and a great tall tower with a minaret and a spire rose up into the sky over the room where she slept, to tell all the world that there was the spot where the Lady of the Seven Stars was resting. And she had a thousand slaves who knelt and bowed themselves to the earth when she spoke to them, and her palanquin was all of ebony-wood inlaid with pearl, and it was hung with silver fringe, and the inside was satin, the colour of the opening roses; and she travelled on an elephant whose trappings were of gold. Ah, that is the beautiful land; where the sun is scorching hot on the fields, and shines bright and glorious, and throws golden darts through the chinks of the blinds. And yet there the ladies of high rank--like my grandmother and my mother and I, lie still and cool in their apartments, or step down soft-footed into their marble baths where no hot glare can reach them, only the sense that it is warm and bright outside. Oh, that is the place to live in, to be happy in. How could my mother leave it to come to a land like this!” She had worked herself up as she sang the praises of her own country to a pitch of glowing excitement, which changed suddenly to an almost heartbroken wail with her last words. Mrs. Ellis looked up from the table reprovingly. “You forget, Nouna, that India is a heathen country, and that your grandmother probably never had the chance of seeing so much as a single missionary, and seems to have been very ignorant of her higher duties.”