It was peaceful, colourful, almost in its way beautiful, especially after a long day's work in the office tent which rose a few hundred yards away. Suddenly the clear-cut silence of the scene was marred by a deprecatory voice behind me.
"The Presence will not think it so fine as '_Ide Park_, doubtless?"
"So fine as what?" I echoed carelessly, being accustomed to the thousand and one interruptions of a district officer's life.
"So fine as your '_Ide Par-k_ in the town of London."
"Hyde Park!--why! what the deuce do you know of Hyde Park?"
Intense surprise had replaced my indifference, for there was nothing to account for the strangeness of his words either in the face or figure of the man who stood behind me leaning on a long staff over which his hands were crossed. It was just such a face and figure as I saw every day. A typical Jât--in other words, a farmer by race and heritage--tall, high-shouldered, lank, with a bushy-shaped turban adding to his height, and straight folds of heavy, unbleached cotton cloth suggesting the lean, bony frame beneath. A face well cut, but not refined, marked, but not strong, in which the most noticeable features were the large dreamy eyes like those of Botticelli's Moses in the Sistine Chapel.
Immovable from the knee downwards he squatted, as the Americans say, "in his tracks," keeping his submissive face towards mine like a dog awaiting his master's pleasure.
"By the mercy of the Presence I have seen 'Ide Park. Yes, I have been there--in the city of London--where the _sahibs_ and the _mem-sahibs_ sit and walk."
A vision of the figure before me planted out amongst flower-decked mashers and powdery belles aroused such a sense of incongruity in my mind that I could only echo feebly--
"Yes!" he replied cheerfully, "I've been to London to see the great Queen."
For the life of me I could not help reverting to the sequence of childish days: "_Pussy cat, pussy cat, what saw you there?_" and his reply fitted in so neatly that my query lost its lightness and became serious.
"I saw the _Sikattar_ (secretary) who sits in her chair."
I laughed then; I could not help it, for I felt convinced that no other words could have expressed the whole incident more truthfully.
