refreshing pull or two At breakfast and luncheon little Mister Speaker will straggle into the dining-room, and fond parents will give him a tid-bit of many soft dainties, to be washed down with brandy and water, beer, sherry, or other alcoholic draught. On such broken meals Baby is raised.
The little drawn face, etiolated and weary-looking, recommends sleep; but Baby is a bad sleeper. The Bearer-in-waiting carries about a small pillow all day long, and from time to time Baby is applied to it. He frets and cries, and they brood over him, humming some plaintive Indian lullaby. Still he turns restlessly and whimpers, though they pat him and shampoo him, and call him fond names, and tell him soothing stories of bulbuls and flowers and woolly sheep. But Baby does not sleep, and even Indian patience is exhausted. Both Ayah and Bearer would like to slip away to their mud houses at the other end of the compound and have a pull at the fragrant huqqa and a gossip with the saices; but while Sunny Baba is at large, and might at any moment make a raid on Mamma, who is dozing over a
