Sunni was growing fast; he was too tall and thin for nine years old.  Dr. Roberts took anxious care of him, thinking of the unknown grandfather and grandmother in England, and how he could best tell them of this boy of theirs, who read Urdu better than English, and wore embroidered slippers turned squarely up at the toes, and asked such strange questions about his father’s God.  But when he taxed the Maharajah with his promise, His Highness simply repeated, in somewhat more amiable terms, his answer of the year before.  And the work was now prospering more than ever.  When once he had got the hospital, Dr. Roberts made up his mind that he would take definite measures; but he would get the hospital first.

CHAPTER VII

I suppose it was about that time that Surji Rao began to consider whether it was after all for the best interests of the State that ee-Wobbis should remain in it.  Surji Rao was first Minister to the Maharajah, and a very important person.  He had charge of the Treasury, and it was his business to produce every day one hundred fresh rupees to put into it.  This was his duty, and whether the harvests had been good and the cattle many, or whether the locusts and the drought had made the people poor, Surji Rao did his duty.  If ever he should fail, there hung a large and heavy shoe upon the wall of the Maharajah’s apartment, which daily suggested personal chastisement and a possible loss of dignity to Surji Rao.

Dr. Roberts was making serious demands upon the Treasury, and proposed to make others more serious still.  Worse than that, he was supplanting Surji Rao in the confidence and affection of the Maharajah.  Worse still, he was making a pundit of that outcast boy, who had been already too much favoured in the palace, so that he might very well grow up to be Minister of the Treasury instead of Rasso, son of Surji Rao—­a thing unendurable.  Surji Rao was the fattest man in the State, so fat that it was said he sat down only twice a day; but he lay awake on sultry nights for so many weeks reflecting upon this, that he grew obviously, almost ostentatiously, thin.  To this he added such an extremely dolorous expression of countenance that it was impossible for the Maharajah, out of sheer curiosity, to refrain from asking him what was the matter.

’My father and my mother!  I grow poor with thinking that the feet of strangers are in the palace of the King, and what may come of it.’

The Maharajah laughed and put his arm about the shoulders of Surji Rao.

’I will give you a tub of melted butter to grow fat upon again, and two days to eat it, though indeed with less on your bones you were a better Rajput.  What should come of it, Surji Rao?’

The Minister sheathed the anger that leapt up behind his eyes in a smile.  Then he answered gravely—­

’What should come of it but more strangers?  Is it not desired to make a road for their guns and their horses?  And talk and treaties, and tying of the hand and binding of the foot, until at last that great Jan Larrens[1] himself will ride up to the gate of the city and refuse to go away until Your Highness sends a bag of gold mohurs to the British Raj, as he has done before.’