ore embroidered slippers turned squarely up at the toes, and asked
such strange questions about his father's God. But when he taxed
the Maharajah with his promise, His Highness simply repeated, in
somewhat more amiable terms, his answer of the year before. And
the work was now prospering more than ever. When once he had got
the hospital, Dr. Roberts made up his mind that he would take
definite measures; but he would get the hospital first.

CHAPTER VII

I suppose it was about that time that Surji Rao began to consider
whether it was after all for the best interests of the State that
ee-Wobbis should remain in it. Surji Rao was first Minister to the
Maharajah, and a very important person. He had charge of the
Treasury, and it was his business to produce every day one hundred
fresh rupees to put into it. This was his duty, and whether the
harvests had been good and the cattle many, or whether the locusts
and the drought had made the people poor, Surji Rao did his duty.
If ever he should fail, there hung a large and heavy shoe upon the
wall of the Maharajah's apartment, which daily suggested personal
chastisement and a possible loss of dignity to Surji Rao.

Dr. Roberts was making serious demands upon the Treasury, and
proposed to make others more serious still. Worse than that, he
was supplanting Surji Rao in the confidence and affection of the
Maharajah. Worse still, he was making a pundit of that outcast
boy, who had been already too much favoured in the palace, so that
he might very well grow up to be Minister of the Treasury instead
of Rasso, son of Surji Rao--a thing unendurable. Surji Rao was the
fattest man in the State, so fat that it was said he sat down only
twice a day; but he lay awake on sultry nights for so many weeks
reflecting upon this, that he grew obviously, almost ostentatiously,
thin. To this he added such an extremely dolorous expression of
countenance that it was impossible for the Maharajah, out of sheer
curiosity, to refrain from asking him what was the matter.

'My father and my mother! I grow poor with thinking that the feet
of strangers are in the palace of the King, and what may come of
it.'

The Maharajah laughed and put his arm about the shoulders of Surji
Rao.

'I will give you a tub of melted butter to grow fat upon again, and
two days to eat it, though indeed with less on your bones you were
a better Rajput. What should come of it, Surji Rao?'

The Minister s