Page:The Spoilt Child.djvu/81

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THE SPOILT CHILD.
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boy is Matilall! he is a very model of what a boy should be." "Ugh!" exclaimed Becharam Babu: "It was not I that wished this wrong done: I did'nt want to see this case won, far from it." Saying this, he took Beni Babu's hand and went off with him. Baburam Babu having made his offerings at Kali's shrine at Kalighat, embarked on a boat to return home.

Though the Bengalees have always great pride of caste, it may sometimes fall out that even a Mahomedan may be regarded as worthy of equal honour with the ancestral deity, and Baburam Babu began now to regard Thakchacha as a veritable Bhishna Deva: he put his arms round his neck and forgot everything else in the joy of victory: food and devotions were alike neglected. Again and again they repeated that Mr. Butler had no equal, that there was no one like Bancharam Babu, that Becharam Babu and Beni Babu were utter idiots. Matilall gazed all about him, at one moment standing on the edge of the boat, at another pulling an oar, at another sitting on the roof of the cabin or hard at work with the rudder. "What are you doing, boy?" said Baburam to him, "Do sit quiet for a moment, if you can." One of Baburam Babu's gardeners, Shankur Mali, of Kashijora, prepared the Babu's tobacco for him: his heart expanded with joy, when he saw his master looking so happy, and he asked him: "Will you have many nautches at the Durga Pujah this year, sir? Isn't that a cotton factory over there? How many cotton factories have these unbelievers set up?"

Change is the order of things in this world. Anger cannot long remain latent in the mind, but must reveal itself sooner or later; and so with a storm in nature, when there is great heat, and a calm atmosphere, a squall may suddenly rise. The sun was just setting, the evening coming on, when suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, a small