six months' salary of his father. On which you told him to make an application. Then, on his making the application, you again say the salary cannot be given before the accounts are closed. Honored Sir, is this the judgement on a servant when he is put in prison?
Wood. Did not I know this? Thou stupid, ungrateful creature! What becomes of your salaries? If you did not devour the price of the Indigo, would there be any deadly Commission? Would the poor ryots have gone to the Missionaries with tears in their eyes? You, rascal, have destroyed every thing. If the Indigo lessen in quantity, I shall sell your houses and indemnify myself; thou arrant coward, hellish knave!
Gopi. Sir, we are like butcher's dogs; we fill our bellies with the intestines. Had you, Sir, taken the Indigo from the ryots in the very same way as the Mahajans (factors) take the corn from their debtors, then the Indigo Factories would never have suffered such disgrace; there would have been no necessity for an overseer and the khalasis, and the people would never have reproached me with saying, "Cursed Gopi! Cursed Gopi!"
Wood. Thou art blind, thou hast no eyes.
Enter an Umadar (an Apprentice)
I have seen with my own eyes (applying his hand to his own eyes) the Mahajans go to the rice-field and quarrel with the ryots (their debtors.) Ask this person.
Apprentice. Honored Sir, I can give many examples of that. The ryots say, it is through the grace of the Indigo-Planters only that we are preserved from the hands of the Mahajans.
Gopi. (Aside, to the Apprentice.) My child, it is vain flattery. No employment is vacant now. (To Mr. Wood) It is true that the Mahajans go to the rice-fields and dispute with the ryots; but if your Honor had been acquainted with the myste-
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