The Bronze Bell

"No. Do you?"

"Not in the least. How should I?"

"You yourself speak Urdu."

"Well but--" The situation hardly lent itself to such a discussion; he had the babu first to dispose of. Amber resumed his cross-examination. "Who are you?" he demanded. "And what is your business in this place?"

The fat yellowish-brown face was distorted by a fugitive grimace of deprecation. "Hazoor, I am Behari Lal Chatterji, solicitor, of the Inner Temple."

"Well? And your business here?"

"Hazoor, that is for your secret ear." The babu drew himself up, assuming a certain dignity. "It is not meet that the message of the Bell should be uttered in the hearing of an Englishwoman, hazoor."

"What are you drivelling about?" In his blank wonder, Amber returned to English as to a tongue more suited to his urgent need of forcible expression. "And, look here, you stop calling me 'Hazoor.' I'm no more a hazoor than you are--idiot!"

"Nay," contended the babu reproachfully; "is it right that you should seek to ho