And she went on rolling out queer guttural Arabic titles till Foster-mother implored her to be silent or she would frighten the child.  Could she not see the look on the darling’s face?

For Baby Akbar was indeed listening to something with his little finger up to command attention.  But it was not to Head-nurse’s thunderings, but to the first long, low growl of a coming storm that outside the miserable tent was turning the distant hills to purple and darkening the fast-fading daylight.

“Frighten?” echoed Head-nurse in derision.  “The son of Humayon the heroic, the grandson of Baber the brave could never be frightened at anything!”

And in truth the little lad was not a bit afraid, even when a distant flash of lightning glimmered through the dusk.

“Heavens!” cried gentle Queen Humeeda, “his Majesty will be drenched to the skin ere he returns.”  She was a brave woman, but the long, long strain of daily, hourly danger was beginning to tell on her health, and the knowledge that even this coming storm was against them brought the tears to her eyes.

“Nay!  Nay! my royal mistress,” fussed Head-nurse, who, in spite of her love of pomp, was a kind-hearted, good woman, “this must not be on such an auspicious day.  It must be celebrated otherwise, and for all we are so poor, we can yet have ceremonial.  When the child was born were we not in direst danger?  Such danger that all his royal father could do in honor of the glad event was to break a musk-bag before his faithful followers as sign that the birth of an heir to empire would diffuse itself like perfume through the whole world?  Even so now, and if I cannot devise some ceremony, then am I no Head-nurse!”

So saying she began to bustle around, and ere long even poor, unhappy Queen Humeeda began to take an interest in the proceedings.

A mule trunk, after being ransacked for useful odds and ends, was put in a corner and covered with a worn satin quilt.  This must do for a throne.  And a strip of red muslin wound about the little gold-embroidered skull cap Baby Akbar wore must, with the heron’s plume from his father’s state turban, make a monarch of the child.

In truth he looked very dignified indeed, standing on the mule trunk, his little legs very wide apart, his little crimson silk trousers very baggy, his little green brocade waistcoat buttoned tight over his little fat body, and, trailing from his shoulders in great stiff folds, his father’s state cloth-of-gold coatee embroidered with seed pearls.

So, as he always wore great gold bracelets on his little fat arms, and great gold jingling anklets fringing his little fat feet, he looked very royal indeed.  Very royal and large and calm, for he was a grave baby with big, dark, piercing eyes and a decided chin.

“He is as like his grandfather as two splits of a pea!” cried Head-nurse in rapture, and then she went to the tent door and shrilled out: