said the little lady with a superior air.

So, about an hour afterwards, after the children had been put to bed and
their elders had begun the serious work of watching and waiting and
dozing through the night, two little figures, well wrapped up in quilted
cotton gowns and dragging quilted cotton blankets behind them, stole up
the stairs to the roof of the house.

"I'm going to ask God to let him come," said Baby Akbar solemnly. So
they both touched the cold marble floor with their warm little foreheads
and said:

"Please Great God! Let our grand-dad Babar come and take care of us, and
be kind to us, and not let the Angel write nasty things on our foreheads
for this next year!"

Then they cuddled themselves closely together in the blankets and were
soon fast asleep.

So fast asleep that even when, after the short hullaballoo which
followed on the discovery that they were not in their beds, they were
traced to the roof, they did not thoroughly wake up, but were carried
down again without knowing much about it.

"Shall I blow out the lights?" asked Roy, as Head-nurse prepared to
descend also.

[Illustration: _So they both touched the cold marble floor with their
warm little foreheads._]

Head-nurse looked round to Foster-father for his opinion.

"No!" he said shortly, "leave them! The children have asked some one to
eat those sweets. Let be! They may want all the help they can get."

So all the night long the little lamps twinkled and twinkled.

But when morning came there was not a sweet left!

"It must have been the rats," said Meroo, who, as cook, had gone up to
see what he could save. "I saw the tail of one disappearing."

But Foster-father said swiftly: "I would it were some other helper, for
the time has come for help. Prince Askurry hath sent to say we start for
Kabul and cruel brother Kumran at noon to-day!"

CHAPTER XI

A WINTER MARCH

It was only too true! The escort which was to see them on the road was
already occupying the garden, the horses champing their bits and
fretting because the long branches of the roses at which they snatched
held nothing but thorns.

Prince Akbar, indeed, was too much interested in watching them and
wondering if they were very hungry to take much heed of anything else,
but Princess Bakshee Bani Begum, who was a very practical little person,
at once began to pack up her favourite doll.

"You had better choose out some toy, Mirak," said she, "or you will