The Chaplain's wife,
being a good Christian and disliking anything in the shape of fuss or scandal-
-Lispeth was beyond her management entirely--had told the Englishman to tell
Lispeth that he was coming back to marry her. "She is but a child, you know,
and, I fear, at heart a heathen," said the Chaplain's wife. So all the twelve
miles up the hill the Englishman, with his arm around Lispeth's waist, was
assuring the girl that he would come back and marry her; and Lispeth made him
promise over and over again. She wept on the Narkunda Ridge till he had passed
out of sight along the Muttiani path.
Then she dried her tears and went in to Kotgarh again, and said to the
Chaplain's wife: "He will come back and marry me. He has gone to his own
people to tell them so." And the Chaplain's wife soothed Lispeth and said: "He
will come back." At the end of two months, Lispeth grew impatient, and was
told that the Englishman had gone over the seas to England. She knew where
England was, because she had read little geography primers; but, of course,
she had no conception of the nature of the sea, being a Hill girl.
There was an old puzzle-map of the World in the House. Lispeth had played with
it when she was a child. She unearthed it again, and put it together of
evenings, and cried to herself, and tried to imagine where her Englishman was.
Pages:
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547