This afternoon, however, I hear an unlicensed sound. It is the sound of an infant giving tongue, and it comes from the quarters. Now there ought not to be a baby in the quarters; it is against all orders. No form of domestic ménage is permitted there; the place is supposed to be a monastery, and the servants to house their women-folk elsewhere. The sound is as persistent as it is unwarrantable; it is not only a breach of custom, but displeasing. How am I to reckon with it? I may send for Dumboo and complain. In that case the noise will cease at once; they will give opium to the child, which will injure its digestion, and in the future, as a grown-up person, it will enjoy life less because I could not put up with its crying as an infant. I can report the matter to Tiglath-Pileser, which would mean an end to the baby, not illegally, by banishment. But is it so easy? One approves, of course, of all measures to discourage them about the premises, but when in spite of rules and regulations a baby has found its way in, and is already lamenting its worldly prospects at the top of its voice, in honest confidence that at least the roof over its head will be permanent, a complication arises. I cannot dislodge such a one. Better deafness and complicity. Far down the khud-side an Imperial bugle. Abroad the spaces the mountains stand in, and purple valleys deepening. Among the deodars a whisper, not of scandal, believe me. A mere announcement that the day is done. On the other side of the hill a pony trotting, farther and fainter receding, but at the farthest and faintest it is plain that he goes short in front. From the bazaar a temple bell, with the tongue of an alien religion.... CHAPTER XII To-day I think India, down below there on the other side of the hill, must be at its hottest. A white dust haze hangs over the plains, but we know what is going on under it; nearly all of us have gasped through June more than once in those regions. It is the time when you take medical advice before committing yourself to a railway journey, even with the provision of a cracked-ice pillow,--the favourite time to step out of the train and die of cholera in the waiting room. It is also the very special time for the British private soldier to go out in anger and kick with his foot the punkah-wallah who has fallen asleep with the slack rope in his hand, so that the punkah-wallah, in whom is concealed unknown to the private soldier an enlarged spleen, immediately dies. There is then trouble and high-talking, because of the people who consider that the death of a punkah-wallah demands the life of a private soldier who only meant to admonish him, a contention which cannot be judged without a knowledge of the relative values concerned, and an experience of the temperature in which the rash and negligent act was committed. There is reason in the superstition which associates great heat with the devil. Operating alone, it can do almost as much as he can.