The Potter's Thumb

'Nay! thou hast given me enough, oh Mizra sahib. More than a free woman cares to have,' said Chândni, with a shrug of her massive shoulders. 'Thou hadst thy chance to pay me fair.'

Ten days had passed since George, after many hours of deadly discomfort, found himself admitting that the world was not such an intolerable place, even in India; that, when all...

The words were given in an impatient tone, for Lewis Gordon was busy, and he hated being disturbed; especially when, as now, he had taken his coat off, literally as well as figu...

The _dîners à la russe_ on the roof had not passed unnoticed by the world below. How could they? Over such strange doings curious tongues must need wag, setting other curious ey...

'I never was so tired of any place in my life,' remarked Mrs. Boynton. 'It was not so bad at first; but nothing would ever induce me to attempt the wilderness again.'

One of the lights Chândni saw came from Lewis Gordon's tent. He was hard at work, not altogether from sheer industry. Sleep with him--oddly enough in one claiming such serenity...

Whether Lewis Gordon spoke truth or not regarding the part he had to play, there could be no doubt that Dan found his anything but sorry. A subdued sort of radiance softened yet...

The last twelve hours before the advancing rains break over your particular portion of the fiery furnace!--who can describe them? Who, having once endured them, can need descrip...

Naturally enough George overslept himself. Naturally also he woke to feel himself hustled and bustled, for he was due to meet the incoming camp at the borders of his district at...

As she raised the parti-coloured rag covering the child's body, the noonday sun streamed down upon a pitiful sight. Yet her eyes, despite the motherhood which lay in them, accep...

It was band-night in the public gardens; mail night also; a combination of dancing and picture papers, ensuring a large attendance in the big hall, which had been built, gravely...

Mrs. Boynton was physically incapable of being constant to anything disagreeable, even to her own thoughts. The love of ease which came uppermost in her made it impossible; so,...

Mrs. Boynton had behaved very much as Lewis Gordon had anticipated on hearing of George Keene's sudden death from cholera. She had wept honest tears over the dear lad, even whil...

George Keene was trying to translate the cloth-of-gold sunlight into cadmium yellow, with the result that the blue of the tiles in his sketch grew green, and the opal on the pig...

Deodars and soft green stretches of turf, surrounded by a map of Asia in high relief; silver streaks of rivers at the bottom of the map; snowy peaks and passes at the top of the...

Over and over again, through the long hot days and nights, the murmur, in its monotonous hurry, blent with the hum of the potter's wheel. The old man had removed the latter to t...

It was a hot October. The rains coming early had stopped early, giving Lewis Gordon and Rose that charming sunshiny month on the Hills, of which mention has been made. A whole m...

Among those things which come by Nature and are not to be taught, may be reckoned a pretty seat on horseback. One may be a good rider without it, a poor one with it; but when gr...

It was a lady, whom he had never seen before, fast asleep in his arm-chair; _the_ arm-chair of bachelor's quarters, which, having served as a deck lounge on the way out, brings...

The angel Azrael had turned aside from other doors in Hodinuggur besides that of the red-hot bungalow across the canal. Fuzl Elâhi, the potter, sat once more at his work, with t...

'I was never so happy or so sorry in all my life before, and I thank Heaven that I'm enough of an Irishman still to say so without being afraid of being laughed at.'

Azîzan was waiting for darkness, like many another woman in India; waiting for the veil of night to destroy the veil of man's contriving. Not so much because she dreaded to show...

A shivering woman in one pannier; in the other, such things as a breathless fugitive can gather together in one hurried half hour. Between them the hump of a camel, a camel whic...

The dawn broke upon a new world as far as Hodinuggur was concerned. Where the desert had stretched thirsty and dry, lay a shoreless sea. Where the streak of silver had split the...

They had been doing the sights of Hodinuggur as an afternoon's amusement; tennis in a riding-habit having no attractions for Rose. Mrs. Boynton, however, on the plea of being a...

Both for the reader's and writer's sake it is never fair to end a story as you would end a play in a situation, for the former tries--vainly it may be--to present life even in i...

Rose Tweedie's sneer against men's women lacked point, since it so happened that Mrs. Boynton, in the opposite corner-room of the pavilion, was, at the very moment, setting asid...

Chândni was standing in her cool recesses of shadow at the farther end of the gateway which adjoined the little strip of bazaar leading past the palace. A bazaar but a few yards...