CRUEL BROTHER KUMRAN If Dearest-Lady was in truth a gaoler, she was a very kind one, and her prison the pleasantest prison in the world.

It would take too long to tell how happily the next four months passed, not only for the two children, but for Roy and Foster-father, Head-nurse and Foster-mother.
Even misshapen Meroo, in the kitchen, felt the better for helping to cook the Khanzada Khanum's dinner.

For that was one of Dearest-Lady's virtues, she always made people feel contented, and as if they were doing the right thing.

So even Prince Kumran, when he returned to Kabul, though he frowned at the big, bold, frank-faced boy who claimed to be the Heir-to-an-Empire which his own fingers itched to have, did not feel inclined to interfere with his aunt.

The truth being that, like the rest of the family, he loved and trusted her beyond measure; perhaps more than did any of his brothers, since she had brought him up as a child.
And she, in her turn, though she knew his faults, though she not only bewailed them, but resented them, at times most fiercely, could not forget that he had been her nursling, could not forget, above all, that he was her dear brother Babar's son.
Thus all went smoothly in the Bala Hissar, where young Prince Akbar, now close on three years old, looked and talked and acted like one of six.