The innocent request was underlined by an unmistakable glance through her lashes at Joe. She wanted him to hear; and she didn't care if he understood--him and his beaky mother! Clearly her own Mummy understood.

She was nibbling her lips, trying not to smile.

"Very well, dear," she said. "I'll send Alice at half-past six. Run along."

Tara gave her hand a grateful little squeeze--and ran.

She would have hated the "beaky mother" worse than ever could she have heard her remark to Lady Despard, when they were alone.

"Really, a most obstinate, ungoverned child. His mother, of course--a very pretty creature--but what can you expect? Natives always ruin boys."

Lady Despard--Lilamani Sinclair's earliest champion and friend--could be trusted to deal effectually with a remark of that quality.

As for Tara--once "the creatures" were out of sight they were extinct.

All the embryo mother in her was centred on Roy. It was a shame sending him to his room, like a naughty boy, when he was really a champion, a King-Arthur's-Knight. But if only he properly explained, Uncle Nevil would surely understand----

And suddenly there sprang a dilemma. How could Roy make himself repeat to Uncle Nevil the rude remarks of that abominable boy? And if not--how was he going to properly explain----?

CHAPTER IV.

"What a great day came and pa.s.sed; Unknown then, but known at last."

--ALICE MEYNELL.

That very problem was puzzling Roy as he lay on his bed, with Prince's head against his shoulder, aching a a good deal, exulting at thought of his new-born knighthood, wondering how long he was to be treated like a sinner,--and, through it all, simply longing for his mother....

It was the conscious craving for her sympathy, her applause, that awakened him to his dilemma.

He had championed her with all his might against that lumpy Boy-of-ten,--who kicked in the meanest way; and he couldn't explain why, so she couldn't know ever. The memory of those insulting words hurt him so that he shrank from repeating them to anyone--least of all to her.

Yet how could he see her and feel her and not tell her everything? She would surely ask--she would want to know--and then--when he tried to think beyond that point he felt simply lost.

It was an _impa.s.se_ none the less tragic because he was only nine. To tell her every little thing was as simple a necessity of life as eating or sleeping; and--till this bewildering moment--as much a matter of course. For Lilamani Sinclair, with her Eastern mother-genius, had forged between herself and her first-born a link woven of the tenderest, most subtle fibres of heart and spirit; a link so vital, yet so una.s.sertive, that it bid fair to stand the strain of absence, the test of time. So close a link with any human heart, while it makes for beauty, makes also for pain and perplexity,--as Roy was just realising to his dismay.

At the sound of footsteps he sat up, suddenly very much aware of his unheroic dishevelment. He tugged at the fallen stocking and made hasty dabs at his hair. But it was only Esther the housemaid with an envelope on a tray. Envelopes, however, were always mysterious and exciting.

His name was scribbled on this one in Tara's hand; and as Esther retreated he opened it, wondering....

It contained a half-sheet of note-paper, and between the folds lay a circle of narrow blue ribbon plaited in three strands. But only two of the strands were ribbon; the third was a tress of her gleaming hair. Roy gazed at it a moment, lost in admiration, still wondering; then he glanced at Tara's letter--not scrawled, but written with laboured neatness and precision.

"DEAR ROY,--It was splendid. You are Prithvi Raj. I am sending you the bangel like Aunt Lila told us. It can't be gold or jewels. But I pulled the ribbin out of my petticote and put in sum of my hair to make it spangly. So now you are Braselet Bound Brother. Don't forget. From TARA."

"I hope you aren't hurting much. Do splain to Uncle Nevil properly and come down soon. I am hear playing with Chris. TARA."

Roy sat looking from the letter to the bangle with a distinctly pleasant kind of mixed-up feeling inside. He was so surprised, so comforted, so elated by this tribute from his High Tower Princess, who was an exacting person in the matter of heroes. Now--besides being a Knight and a champion he was Bracelet-Bound Brother as well.

Only the other day his mother had told them a tale about this old custom of bracelet-sending in Rajputana:--how, on a certain holy day, any woman--married or not married--may send her bracelet token to any man.

If he accepts it, and sends in return an embroidered bodice, he becomes from that hour her bracelet brother, vowed to her service, like a Christian Knight in the days of chivalry. The bracelet may be of gold or jewels or even of silk interwoven with spangles--like Tara's impromptu token. The two who are bracelet-bound might possibly never meet face to face. Yet she, who sends, may ask of him who accepts, any service she pleases; and he may not deny it--even though it involve the risk of his life.

The ancient custom, she told them, still holds good, though it has declined in use, like all things chivalrous, in an age deafened by the clamour of industrial strife; an age grown blind to the beauty of service, that, in defiance of "progress," still remains the keynote of an Indian woman's life.

So these privileged children had heard much of it, through the medium of Lilamani's Indian tales; and this particular one had made a deeper impression on Tara than on Roy; perhaps because the budding woman in her relished the power of choice and command it conferred on her own s.e.x.

Certainly no thought of possible future commands dawned on Roy. It was her pride in his achievement, so characteristically expressed that flattered his incipient masculine vanity and added a cubit to his stature. He knew now what he meant to be when he grew up. Not a painter, or a soldier or a gardener--but a Bracelet-Bound Brother....

Gingerly, almost shyly, he slipped over his hand the deftly woven, trifle of ribbon and gleaming hair. As the first glow of pleasure subsided, there sprang the instinctive thought--"Won't Mummy be pleased!" And straightway he was caught afresh in the toils of his dilemma--How could he possibly explain----?

What was she doing? Why didn't she come----?

There----! His ear caught far-off footsteps--too heavy for hers. He slipped off the Bracelet, folded it in Tara's letter and tucked it away inside his shirt.

Hurriedly--a little nervously--he tied his brown bow and got upon his feet, just as the door opened and his father came in.

"_Well_, Roy!" he said, and for a few seconds he steadily regarded his small son with eyes that tried very hard to be grave and judicial.

Scoldings and a.s.sertions of authority were not in his line: and the tug at his heart-strings was peculiarly strong in the case of Roy. Fair himself, as the boy was dark, their intrinsic likeness of form and feature was yet so striking that there were moments--as now--when it gave Nevil Sinclair an eerie sense of looking into his own eyes,--which was awkward, as he had come steeled for chastis.e.m.e.nt, if needs must, though his every instinct revolted from the mutual indignity. He had only once inflicted it on Roy for open defiance in one of his stormy ebullitions of temper; and, at this moment, he did not seem to see a humble penitent before him.

"What have you got to say for yourself?" he went on, hoping the pause had been impressive; strongly suspecting it had been nothing of the kind. "Gentlemen, as I told you, don't hammer their guests. It was rather a bad hammering, to judge from his handkerchief. And you don't look particularly sorry about it either."

"I'm not--not one littlest bit."

This was disconcerting; but Nevil held his ground.

"Then I suppose I've got to whack you. If boys aren't sorry for their sins, it's the only way."

Roy's eyelids flickered a little.

"You better not," he said with the same impersonal air of conviction.

"You see, it wouldn't make me sorry. And you don't hurt badly. Not half as much as Joe did. He was mean. He kicked. I wouldn't have stopped, all the same--if _you_ hadn't come."

The note of reproach was more disconcerting than ever.

"Well, if whacking's no use, what am I to do with you? Shut you up here till bedtime--eh?"

Roy considered that dismal proposition, with his eyes on the summer world outside.

"Well--you can if you like. But it wouldn't be fair." A pause. "You don't know what a horrid boy he was, Daddy. _You'd_ have hit him harder--even if he _was_ a guest."

"I wonder!" Nevil fatally admitted. "Of course it would all depend on the provocation."

"What's 'provication'?"

The instant alertness, over a new word, brought back the smile to Nevil's eyes.

"It means--saying or doing something bad enough to make it right for you to be angry."

"Well, it was bad enough. It was"--a portentous pause--"about Mummy."

"About Mummy?" The sharp change in his father's tone was at once startling and comforting. "Look here, Roy. No more mysteries. This is my affair as much as yours. Come here."