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111<br />
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR<br />
Soon, however, the storm was over, the lady recovered her temper and<br />
returned to her seat, but no fresh tea was ordered. Gul Begum felt<br />
sorry, she would have liked some. Instead, the y were ordered to sit on<br />
a carpet at the far end of the room and do absolutely nothing – the<br />
occupation, indeed, that all the other women shared.<br />
“Has no one any work to do?” Shereen whispered to her cousin.<br />
“What does she say?” asked the Bibi, but neither of the girls answered.<br />
“Do you hear me?” she asked again angrily. “What did that girl say?”<br />
“I said it was kind of you not to set us to work,” Shereen prevaricated<br />
skilfully.<br />
“If that was all why did you not answer at once?” Ferad Shah’s wife<br />
went on sharply. “No one is going to hurt you for speaking.”<br />
“Of your kindness, excuse her,” whispered Shereen’s mother nervou sly.<br />
The lad y turned to the lad y next her, whispered something, and both<br />
burst into a fit of forced laughter. The <strong>Hazara</strong>s sat still, feeling<br />
uncomfortable; they knew the y were being laughed at.<br />
All the rest of that day they spent with the ladies and women of the<br />
household, and at two o’clock in the morning the y were sitting in the<br />
reception room, still, silent, and unoccupied. Even Shereen did not<br />
venture on a remark.<br />
Next day they were not sent for, nor the next. They had their meals<br />
alone, and were little noticed by any one, but the third night Gul<br />
Begum was startled from her first sound sleep.<br />
“God, what was that?” she said. Halima, too, had heard something.<br />
“Hark! said Shereen, after a pause, “what’s that?”<br />
It was as though several people were struggling in a padded room<br />
through which nothing could be heard distinctly. Then all was perfectly<br />
silent. The women sat up still, listening, the y knew not for that.<br />
After a time, the door leading into the beautiful garden in which Gul<br />
Begum so longed to wander opened, and some one rapped noisily at the<br />
door of the house.<br />
“Open here, some of you,” the door-keeper’s voice called out. “What’s<br />
going on in there? What was that noise?”<br />
A voice gave some answer that the listeners upstairs could not catch,<br />
but which seemed to pacify the old man, for he took his departure<br />
without proceeding further, murmuring as he went, “Cursed be the<br />
fathers of these women! Why can’t the y keep quiet and peaceable?
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