“Come, Ma Chit, behave yourself!” said her host sternly.  “If you can’t—­you don’t come here again.”

The beauty received this admonition with a scream of laughter, tossed a flower at Salter, wafted a kiss to his guest, and faded away into the veranda.

By degrees, thanks to his constant encounters with Ma Chit, Shafto avoided the Salters’ bungalow, and Roscoe made his visits alone; but as it was not more than three hundred yards from the chummery Shafto had a painful conviction that, when dusk and darkness had fallen, the neighbourhood of his compound was haunted—­not by the malignant and resident nat, but by the graceful and sinuous figure of a little Burmese girl!  Once a stone, to which was attached a paper, was thrown into his room.  On it was inscribed in a babu’s clerkly hand: 

“Do come and talk to Ma Chit.”

CHAPTER XXIX

MUNG BAW

Returning one evening from a lively dinner at the “Barn,” Shafto was surprised to see a light in his room, and still more surprised to find the pongye once again seated on his bed.

“Oh, so you’ve come back!” he exclaimed aghast, and a shadow of annoyance settled on his face.

“I have so,” calmly responded this late visitor; “as I was passing I thought I’d give you a call in.  I came down a couple of weeks back—­as I have some small business here and wanted to show myself to a doctor.  I don’t hold with them native medicines and charms, and I’m inclined to a weakness in me inside.”

“Why, you look as strong as a horse!” was Shafto’s unsympathetic rejoinder, as he sank into a chair and pulled out a cigarette.  The pongye contributed a special personal atmosphere, composed of turmeric, woollen stuff and some fiercely pungent herb.

“Looks is deceitful, and so is many a fine fellow,” observed the pongye in a dreamy voice.  After this pronouncement he relapsed into a reflective silence—­a silence which conveyed the subtle suggestion that the visitor was charged with some weighty mission.  At any rate, it was useless for Shafto to think of undressing and going to bed, since his couch was already occupied by the holy man, who appeared to be established for the night.

Interpreting Shafto’s envious glance, he said: 

“You’ll excuse me sitting on the charpoy, but I’ve got entirely out of the use of chairs, and me bones are too stiff to sit doubled up on the floor like a skewered chicken.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Shafto, who was very sleepy.  “I suppose you have just come from Upper Burma?”

“Yes, that’s the part I most belong to and that suits me.  I can’t do with this soft, wet climate, though I am an Irishman.  I’m from Mogok, that’s the ruby mine district, but what I like best is the real jungle.  Oh, you’d love to see the scenery and to walk through miles and miles of grand trees on the Upper Chindwin; forests blazing with flowers and alive with birds, not to speak of game.  Many’s the time I’ve been aching for the hould of a gun, but, of course, it was an evil thought.”