Then there is Me, of course; but I am only the chorus that comes
in at the end to explain things. So I do not count.
Suddhoo was not clever. The man who pretended to cut seals was the
cleverest of them all--Bhagwan Dass only knew how to lie--except Janoo.
She was also beautiful, but that was her own affair.
Suddhoo's son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, and old Suddhoo was
troubled. The seal-cutter man heard of Suddhoo's anxiety and made capital
out of it. He was abreast of the times. He got a friend in Peshawar to
telegraph daily accounts of the son's health. And here the story begins.
Suddhoo's cousin's son told me, one evening, that Suddhoo wanted to see
me; that he was too old and feeble to come personally, and that I should
be conferring an everlasting honor on the House of Suddhoo if I went to
him. I went; but I think, seeing how well off Suddhoo was then, that he
might have sent something better than an _ekka_, which jolted fearfully,
to haul out a future Lieutenant-Governor to the City on a muggy April
evening. The _ekka_ did not run quickly. It was full dark when we pulled
up opposite the door of Ranjit Singh's Tomb near the main gate of the
Fort. Here was Suddhoo and he said that by reason of my condescension, it
was absolutely certain that I should become a Lieutenant-Governor while
my hair was yet black.
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