A thin musical laugh interrupted him. It came from Lateefa, the kite-maker, who was passing with his bundle of kites for sale. 'Lo! _baboo-jee_!' he said. 'I know naught of time but my poor portion of it, nor of man save my poor self! But I change not, and I am as others. We are like kites; the form changes not unless the maker chooses, and God, so say the Moulvies, changes not at all. He makes men on the old pattern ever; the rest is but dye and tinsel.' So he passed on, tossing his bundle, and chanting the street-seller's cry-- 'Your eyes use, and choose! Use your eyes and choose!' CHAPTER VII CRACKERS AND SQUIBS '_Tinkle, tinkle, ootel ish-star. Ha-a-vunder vart-oo-ar_.' 'Tinkle, tinkle, ootel ish-star. Ha-a-vunder vart-oo-ar_.' 'Tinkle, tinkle, ootel ish-star. Ha-a-vunder vart-oo-ar_.' The damnable iteration went on and on, the fiddles twangled and squeaked, the drum bangers banged, the nautch-girl sidled, and smirked, and shrilled. '_Tinkle, tinkle, ootel ish-star. Ha-a-vunder vart-oo-ar_.' Lesley Drummond, sitting in the front row of guests at the reception given by the nobles and landed proprietors of the Province to welcome Sir George Arbuthnot to his new office, shut her eyes at last in sheer despair of being able to reconcile the senses of hearing and sight; then opened them again to stare with unappeasable curiosity into the blaze of light, veiled by a fine film of misty smoke, in which all things seemed clear, yet dim. It came from the prism-hung chandeliers which hid the low white-marble ceiling, from the wretched paraffin wall-lamps hung against the white-marble pillars, from the paper lanterns swinging from the scalloped white-marble arches. But it came most of all from the garden beyond the arches in which this white-marble summer-palace of a dynasty of dead kings stood, centring the formal walks and watercourses; for it was lit up in long close rows of soft twinkling lights stretching away into the purple shadows of the night, until, climbing to every line, every curve of the purple shadow of the distant city, they showed like new stars upon the purple shadow of the sky.