V
WHILE Indra was relating his story I saw Didi shudder two or three times. She looked at him in silence for a while and then said, with a voice full of affectionate remonstrance, 'Dear, you mustn't do such a thing again. You ought not to play with these dangerous creatures: it was lucky that he only bit the lid in your hand; otherwise just imagine what a terrible thing might have happened.'
'I'm not so big a fool as that, Didi,' said Indra laughing, as he hastened to show a piece of dry root tied to a string which was wound round his waist. 'Haven't I provided against danger? If I hadn't had this, do you think he would have spared me? But you don't know what trouble I had to get this from Shahji. No snake dares to bite you, you know, when you've got this about you; and even if it had bitten me, what then? I would have wakened Shahji and put his poison-stone on the bite. How long do you think, Didi, would that stone take to suck out all the poison? Half an hour, a whole hour, or less?'
Didi sat silent as before. 'You must give me one of those stones to-day, Didi,' continued Indra, warming up. 'You've got two or three, and I have been asking you for one such a long time.' He did not wait for a reply, but immediately added in an aggrieved tone, 'I do everything that you tell me to do; and you always put me off to to-morrow or the day after to-morrow. If you don't
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