them disrespectfully seated in his audience hall!  Patiently she stood, first on one foot and then on the other, with her lips all puckered up and her eyes on the floor, thinking of things that would be polite enough to say to a Maharajah.  They were so troublesome to think of, that she could not attend to what Sonny Sahib said at all, even when he asked her for the sixth time how you made a peacock with blue glass eyes, like the one on each arm of His Highness’s chair.  Sonny Sahib grew quite tired of watching the mud-turtle that was paddling about in a pool of the shallow river among the yellow sands down below, and of counting the camels that were wading across it, carrying their packs and their masters; and yet the Maharajah did not come.

‘Tooni,’ he said presently, ‘without doubt I must sit down,’ and down he sat plumply, with his back against the wall, and his two small legs, in their very best striped cotton trousers, stretched out in front of him.

As a matter of fact the Maharajah was asleep, and had forgotten all about Sonny Sahib in the hall of audience.  It was Moti[1] who reminded him, whispering in his ear until he awoke.  Moti was the little Maharajah, and that was his pet name.  Moti was privileged to remind his father of things.

[1] A pearl.

So Moti and the Maharajah went down to the audience hall together, and there they found Sonny Sahib asleep too, which was not wonderful, considering that the Maharajah had kept him waiting two hours and a quarter.  Perhaps this occurred to His Highness, and prevented him from being angry.  At all events, as Sonny Sahib scrambled to his feet in response to a terrified tug from Tooni, he did not look very angry.

Sonny Sahib saw a little lean old man, with soft sunken black eyes, and a face like a withered potato.  He wore a crimson velvet smoking-cap upon his head, and was buttoned up to the chin in a long tight coat of blue and yellow brocade.  Above the collar and below the sleeves of the coat showed the neck and cuffs of an English linen shirt, which were crumpled and not particularly clean.  The cuffs were so big that the Maharajah’s thin little brown fingers were almost lost in them.  The blue and yellow brocaded coat was buttoned up with emeralds, but the Maharajah shuffled along in a pair of old carpet slippers, which to Sonny Sahib were the most remarkable features of his attire.  So much occupied, indeed, was Sonny Sahib in looking at the Maharajah’s slippers, that he quite forgot to make his salaam.  As for Tooni, she was lying flat at their Highnesses’ feet, talking indistinctly into the marble floor.

The little Highness was much pleasanter to look at than his father.  He had large dark eyes and soft light-brown cheeks, and he was all dressed in pink satin, with a little jewelled cap, and his long black hair tied up in a hard knot at the back of his neck.  The little Highness looked at Sonny Sahib curiously, and then tugged at his father’s sleeve.