In the old days, this ceremony of sounding the royal kettledrums as a sign that majesty lived within, had been quite an imposing one. Then, a _posse_ of liveried servants and soldiers had gone up into the _naubat khana_, and whacked away at a whole row of slung kettledrums, and blared away at the royal _nakârahs_, until all the city knew that sunset had found the King still on his throne. But for some years back it had been very different; a half-hearted apologetic drubbing on one dilapidated drum, a breathless blowing of an uncertain horn had been all. And now, when only one poor tired old woman limped up the broken stairs, it was a very feeble claim to royalty, indeed, that echoed into the courtyard below, though Khôjee drummed valiantly for all she could, and blew her withered cheeks plump as a cherub's over the _nakârah_. Feeble as it was, however, it could be heard, and it brought comfort even to Noormahal's hungry heart; for it meant that the child was still on his throne at sunset. And that was all the world to those lonely women, shut up inconceivably, helplessly, from all hope, almost from all desire for help from that outside world, into which only Aunt Khôjee ventured at times timorously; and only to return poorer, more helpless than she went out. Once, however, when--at the risk of a fit of hysterics, which might incapacitate Aunt Khâdjee from even the writing of paper pellets--Khôjee had persuaded her to allow the little knot of silver earrings without which no court lady could be considered decently clothed, to pay a temporary visit to the pawnbroker, Khôjee had come back from that outside world with a new look of hope on her face. A piece of luck had befallen her. She had met, quite by chance, an old servant of her mother's, who, when the court had been broken up, had taken service as _ayah_ with the _mems_. And this old dame happened to have in her possession a priceless European medicine for just such delicate children as Sa'adut. A _mem_ had given it to her, she said, when her child needed it no more. She did not add that the child, despite the Brand's essence of beef and the care of three doctors, had wasted away into its grave quite as quickly as Sa'adut was doing with neither, and that the unopened tins had been part of her perquisites when the stricken parents had sought distraction from grief in three months' leave. She only said that they were worth rupees on rupees, but that Khôjee might have them for three, because it was for the little Heir. So the patient bent figure and the limp had come back to that cot set in the sunshine, with the feeling that now, at last, the child who lay among the faded cushions of state _must_ pick up strength, since all the world knew that whatever faults the _Huzoors_ had, they were clever doctors--all too clever perhaps!