The Flower of Forgiveness

"Surely this is very rare?" I remarked, as looking through a herbarium of Himalayan plants belonging to a friend of mine, I came upon a small anemone which, contrary to the cust...

"At Punjtârni we met the returning pilgrims; among others Victor, very sick and sorry for himself physically, but of intolerable moral strength. He told us, between the interval...

The wedding fire-balloons rose from the courtyard, and drifted away to form constellations in the cloudless sky; the sound of wedding drums and pipes disturbed the stillness of...

"You have seen service, my good old friend," he exclaimed in fluent Urdu, as he pointed with a declamatory wave of his hand to the solitary medal, "but it was poor service to wh...

"Lo! if the _Baba-sahib_ cares not for being a big _Hâkm_ (magistrate, ruler), sure the next best thing is to be a big _Hâkeem_ (doctor)," he would say, smiling simply at his ow...

"'Tis a pity the faymale sex is so narvous," he said casually. "Ye can't hold 'em responsible for annything; but if it wasn't for hysteria they'd be angels entirely. She has the...

He set my hand aside with unexpected force and a strange dignity. "I am the prisoner of Death, _Huzoor!_ There is no need to hold me; I cannot escape him. For the rest, if I kil...

"Look!" said Narayan Das in a whisper from our spying-ground behind the master's window. The song came to an end, a stir circled through the audience, and one by one the solid c...

Nevertheless peace and contentment reigned apparently in his house. When I sat out in the dark, hot evenings, a glow of flickering firelight from within showed the mysterious mu...

"Dear Miss! don't look sad; think of the difference you have wrought. Oh, do not cry," she went on passionately, for the mild blue eyes were filling with tears. "Come, we will t...

Thus endlessly through afternoon sunshine and afternoon shade, as the shine fell full on a woman who was sitting silently beside a row of mud cooking-places in the first courtya...

There was jeering malice in words, tone, and manner as Parbutti handed over the tarnished silver ornaments; but Durga took them without a word--that aggressive silence of hers s...

Therefore it was an unpleasant surprise when, some six weeks after the original homily against peeping, the significant red envelope which proclaims the shedding of blood found...

He turned his face towards me quickly; it gave me quite a shock to find a pair of clear, light-brown eyes looking at, or rather beyond, me. From his constantly closed lids I had...

Identical so far. The quaintness of the idea prevented me from disturbing it by further inquiry, so I rode on, dimly expectant of finding a third habitual criminal--say Jungal t...

"She wants none of your dolls or your books," shrilled _Mai_ Gungo, who was in a bad temper; "they aren't worth anything, and I expected nothing less than a suit of clothes, or...

I was told afterwards by my superiors, in set terms, that my behaviour was illegal and indiscreet, and that I should have gone round the mutinous crew one by one, giving them th...

Smith-Jones's horse had put its foot into a rat-hole and given him a bad fall, about as bad a fall as could well have been, short of those curious plunges over the edge of one w...

"Then you will take her--to--to Hurdwâr--and--and leave her there." Smith-Jones had a difficulty with this euphemism for the strange and barbarous custom he had read about in bo...

Simple enough, yet in its very simplicity lay their only chance of escape. A string-woven bed buoyed up with the bundles of reeds cut ready for re-thatching, and on this frail r...