He went into his tiny sleeping place, and fetched out from under the coverlet a little bamboo flute; and seating himself on the watering-trough, with his knees drawn up under him and his elbows resting on them, began playing fragments of plaintive tunes picked up in days gone by. He kept this up for a long time repeating little trills and mournful notes because they gave him odd pleasure. In the growing dusk the sparrows hopped nearer and nearer, stealing grain that had fallen on the cobblestones from the last feed he had mixed, and never paying any attention to him and his music. They fitted into the evening as a shadow fits under a tree, and were there because the tree was there.
At last he tired of it, and desisted. Quickly he cooked his evening meal of millet and cabbage, and boiled some tea. When he had finished he changed his tunic and put on his foreign hat and his riding-gaiters.
He went off slowly, stopping whenever anything attracted his attention, and playing for a few minutes with a dog. But presently, in spite of these delays, he reached the house and slowly walked round to the back.
He peered into the kitchen and the pantry, but everybody was busy. The master was already having dinner and there were guests. In the most indifferent manner he marched to the front of the house; then on to the verandah outside the dining-room.
The master was sitting at the head of the table; with him were five or six foreign gentlemen, all eating and drinking and talking and waving their hands.
He coughed and moved forward into the light.
"It is I," he said, stepping into the room and standing there without awkwardness. "The foreign soldiers have taken away the ponies as ordered and now I await fresh commands."
He noted without surprise that the guests had firearms with them and that the dinner was being served not by the steward and his assistants, but by two coolies who were working awkwardly and noisily. He had the feeling that the natural order of things had come to an end.
The master was explaining to the others something about him; but his foreign talk was unintelligible to the boy. He guessed, however, that it was not to his discredit from the glances cast at him. He fidgetted a bit, more because he was unaccustomed to standing still than from any other feeling.