Yasmini is not old, nor nearly old, for all that India is full of
tales about her, from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. In a land where
twelve is a marriageable age, a woman need not live to thirty to be
talked about; and if she can dance as Yasmini does--though only the
Russian ballet can do that--she has the secret of perpetual youth to
help her defy the years. No doubt the soft light favored her, but she
might have been Ranjoor Singh's granddaughter as she barred his way
and looked him up and down impudently through languorous brown eyes.
"Salaam, O plowman!" she mocked. She was not actually still an
instant, for the light played incessantly on her gauzy silken
trousers and jeweled slippers, but she made no move to admit him. "My
honor grows! Twice--nay, three times in a little while!"
She spoke in the Jat tongue fluently; but that was not remarkable,
because Yasmini is mistress of so many languages that men say one can
not speak in her hearing and not be understood.
"I am a soldier," answered Ranjoor Singh more than a little stiffly.
"'I am a statesman,' said the viceroy's babu! A Sikh is a Jat farmer
with a lion's tail and the manners of a buffalo! Age or gallantry
will bend a man's back. What keeps it straight--the smell of the
farmyard on his shoes?"
Ranjoor Singh did not answer, nor did he bow low as she intended.
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