"No letters, sahib."
"Then what do you want?" asked Will, beginning to eye his work again.
Sammy--so dubbed by Daisy long ago because his own name was too sore
a tax upon her memory--sent a look of gleaming entreaty across the
lamp-lit space that separated him from his master.
"The dinner grows cold, sahib," he observed pathetically.
Will smiled a little. "All right, my good Sammy. What does it matter?
I'm sure if I don't mind, you needn't. And I'm busy just now."
But the Indian stood his ground. "What will my mem-sahib say to me,"
he said, "when she comes and finds that my lord has been starved?"
Will's face changed. It was a very open face, boyishly sincere. He did
not laugh at the earnest question. He only gravely shook his head.
"The mem-sahib will come," the man declared, with conviction. "And
what will her servant say when she asks him why his master is so thin?
She will say, 'Sammy, I left him in your care. What have you done to
him?' And, sahib, what answer can her servant give?"
Will clasped his hands at the back of his head in a careless attitude,
but his face was grim. "I don't think you need worry yourself, Sammy,"
he said. "I am not expecting the mem-sahib--at present."
Nevertheless, moved by the man's solicitude, he rose after a moment
and laid his work together.
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