Rudyard Kipling

Plain Tales from the Hills Rudyard Kipling

She was the daughter of Sonoo, a Hill-man, and Jadeh his wife. One year their maize failed, andtwo bears spent the night in their only poppy-field just above the Sutlej Valley on the Kotgarth side;so, next season, they turned Christian, and brought their baby to the Mission to be baptized. TheKotgarth Chaplain christened her Elizabeth, and "Lispeth" is the Hill or pahari pronunciation. Later, cholera came into the Kotgarth Valley and carried off Sonoo and Jadeh, and Lispethbecame half-servant, half-companion to the wife of the then Chaplain of Kotgarth. This was afterthe reign of the Moravian missionaries, but before Kotgarth had quite forgotten her title of"Mistress of the Northern Hills."Whether Christianity improved Lispeth, or whether the gods of her own people would have doneas much for her under any circumstances, I do not know; but she grew very lovely. When a Hill girlgrows lovely, she is worth traveling fifty miles over bad ground to look upon. Lispeth had a Greekface-one of those faces people paint so often, and see so seldom. She was of a pale, ivory colorand, for her race, extremely tall. Also, she possessed eyes that were wonderful; and, had she not beendressed in the abominable print-cloths affected by Missions, you would, meeting her on the hill-sideunexpectedly, have thought her the original Diana of the Romans going out to slay.