So, one morning, Lesley drove down to the Garden. Jack Raymond met her, riding, at the gate, and together they strolled along that wide cross of water and marble and flowers, and climbed the dark stair which led to the little square of roof and the little slip of room that were only just large enough for Auntie Khôjee and the helplessness for which she cared; for Khôjee, helpless as she was, had always stood between some one still more helpless and the buffets of fate, and would have felt lost without the occupation. And there was no reason why she should be without it, when Lateefa, paralysed from the waist beyond all hope of ever getting about again, lacked a caretaker. And so he sat, busy as ever, with slips of bamboo and sheets of tissue-paper on the little square of roof, just as he had sat in the wide courtyard where the royal peacocks now spread their broken plaster tails over plague patients--those plague patients which the vast stability of the Oriental had by this time accepted as inevitable; which it had taken, as it were, into its immemorial custom. Lateefa had been once more asking for paste, and Khôjee had brought him some--without lumps!--in a leaf cup; for she laid it aside to receive Jack Raymond with a '_Bismillah!_' of pleasure, and the strange Miss with a ceremonious _salaam_. Lateefa had the latter for both visitors, but there was a bold questioning in his black eyes for the _Huzoor_, who gave back the look with a valiant attempt at unconsciousness. There was a curious peace up there on the roof, Lesley felt, with only one or two of Lateefa's kites between you and the sky, and the even flow of Lateefa's Persian quotations in your ears; for Auntie Khôjee--after disposing her guests on two rush stools--had hurried into the slip of a room for cardamoms, since they belong to congratulations as well as to consolations. And, nowadays, what with her pension and Lateefa's earnings, there were always cardamoms, real cardamoms, on the roof, and many another comfort besides. Lateefa, making polite conversation, admitted this openly, while Jack Raymond looked uneasily at Lesley, wondering--if her knowledge of the vernacular had not been mercifully limited--what she would have said to the pointed allusions to the benefit every man derived from associating himself with a truly virtuous woman, and the desirableness of settling down in time; not as he--Lateefa--had done, too late for hope of leaving aught behind him but the flimsy children of naught above him! A sorry legacy to the world; though in their day they had done strange things! But the _Huzoor_ was wiser! He----