Sara Jeannette Duncan

The Story of Sonny Sahib Sara Jeannette Duncan

'Ayah, ' the doctor-sahib said in the vernacular, standing beside the bed, 'the fever of the mistress is like fire. Without doubt it cannot go on thus, but all that is in your hand to do you have done. It is necessary now only to be very watchful. And it will be to dress the mistress, and to make everything ready for a journey. Two hours later all the sahib-folk go from this place in boats, by the river, to Allahabad. I will send an ox-cart to take the mistress and the baby and you to the bathing ghat.' 'Jeldi karo!' he added, which meant 'Quickly do!'-a thing people say a great many times a day in India. The ayah looked at him stupidly. She was terribly frightened; she had never been so frightened before. Her eyes wandered from the doctor's face to the ruined south wall of the hut, where the sun of July, when it happens to shine on the plains of India, was beating fiercely upon the mud floor. That ruin had happened only an hour ago, with a terrible noise just outside, such a near and terrible noise that she, Tooni, had scrambled under the bed the mistress was lying on, and had hidden there until the doctor-sahib came and pulled her forth by the foot, and called her a poor sort of person.