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152 A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR “Is there not a woman in all m y establishment who can serve a meal properly?” he asked peevishly. “Ever y day there is something wrong. My house is like a river-bed after a storm.” “Gul Begum is more accustomed to serve meals than I,” the o ld woman said, “and she is younger and more able. Shall I send her?” “Send any one who knows their work,” he said, “I don’t care who it is.” So Gul Begum was reinstated in the high office of serving her master’s meals. At last, worn and feeble, the invalid rose from his couch. “Go help Agha to dress,” Gul Begum said, addressing Sardaro again, “that really is your business. I expect some of his clothes, too, need buttons and repairs of some sort. If you will look them through, I’ll do the sewing.” Dressing her master was an even more difficult task than taking him his meals. “Your hands are like calves’ feet, Sardaro,” he said, “send Gul Begum here,” and so Gul Begum went. As he grew better he began to ask for his papers. He was able to do some work, though he was not able to go to Durbar. “Nam-e-Khuda, Gul Begum, go and see about Agha’s papers,” Sardaro begged. “I can neither read nor write. What good am I among papers?” so that task, too, fell on Gul Begum, but she never presumed, never took the procedure that by rights went with the offices she performed. One service which she had taken upon herself from the first, the girl offered to no one. It was she who spread the master’s prayer-carpet and brought the water for his Voozoo (religious ablutions), a nd it was she who roused him for his pra yers. Only Sardaro kept the purse and ordered the provisions in from the bazaar. Shereen was quite happ y. She had no position, but then she had no special work. That was just what she liked. She was not much worse off than she had been at home. She was fed, clothed, and housed, and but little noticed, except when she told stories. She was an excellent raconteuse, and she had plent y to tell to these other women, who had, poor souls, all been born within some harem walls, and had never known the joy of freedom. Besides, there were all the incidents connected with the war to relate, and the awfu l sights and scenes she had there witnessed formed endless themes, to which the Afghan women are never tired of listening. Old Miriam, too, and her prophecies, and their subsequent fulfilment, were of boundless interest. Shereen sat with her hands before her and told stories, while the others sewed or hushed the children to sleep.
153 A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR She could not both sew and talk, she said, and there was no one but her most ready listener, Sardaro, who had the right to make her do so. The Mir had long since carried off the third of the <strong>Hazara</strong> slaves to his home among the hills, quite certain in his own mind that all the trouble that had fallen on the Chief Secretar y was due to his want of respect for so holy a man as himself, and his evident desire to retract his promise. CHAPTER XXVIII OVERTAXED MONTHS rolled on unnoticed. The Chief Secretar y had but one thought – his master; that sympathy in the time of his great trouble and welded him to the royal service in a wa y that nothing else could have done. Outside his work he had no interest – only a craving – a heart emptiness he could not have described.
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