Veiled

Last week a veiled face appeared in London. Seething Indian retainers and a cordon of British police joined forces to make certain that a visage mellowed by 65 summers should retain its sanctity inviolate.*

Accompanied by her third son and by numerous retainers, the Begum of Bhopal,f sole feminine ruler of an Indian state, interviewed British statesmen on the question of her successor.

Her first and second sons have died. According to the law of primogeniture, her grandson, the son of her eldest son, is her heir. But the Begum clings to her own third son, Sahib Cada Mohomid Mamidulla Kahn, whom she has brought with her to show off to the London sahibs.

Far away, the Government of India is now deliberating the matter. If it decides against the Begum's favorite, she will at once appeal to the Secretary of State for India in Council, the Earl of Birkenhead. Thankfully British statesmen learned that she had brought her own curry cook, opining that had she not done so they might have been harder put to provide her with orthodox viands than to unravel the legal knot of her succession.

*The Begum's face is invariably covered in public. None the less, enterprising photographers managed to secure her picture at the time of a state function years ago.

tA native state in Central India with a population of 692,448 and an area of 6,902 square miles.