Part 4 (1/2)

In this we found an accomplice My elder brothers had a Persian tutor

We used to call hie and all skin and bone, as though dark parch of flesh and blood He probably knew Persian well, his knowledge of English was quite fair, but in neither of these directions lay his alestick wasHe would stand in the sun in the h a wonderful series of antics with a staff--his own shadow being his antagonist I need hardly add that his shadow never got the better of hi shout and whacked it on the head with a victorious s, nasal and out of tune, sounded like a gruesohost-world Our singing master Vishnu would so the bread out of our mouths at this rate!” To which his only reply would be a disdainful smile

This shows that the Munshi+ was amenable to soft words; and in fact, whenever anted we could persuade him to write to the school authorities to excuse us from attendance The school authorities took no pains to scrutinise these letters, they kneould be all the same whether we attended or not, so far as educational results were concerned

I have now a school of my own in which the boys are up to all kinds of mischief, for boys will be

When any of us are beset with undue uneasiness at their conduct and are stirred into a resolution to deal out condign punishment, the misdeeds of my own schooldays confront me in a row and smile at e boys by the standard of grown-ups, to forget that a child is quick andstream; and that, in the case of such, any touch of ireat alarm, for the speed of the flow is itself the best corrective When stagnation sets in then coer So it is for the teacher,

There was a separate refresh their caste requirements This here we struck up a friendshi+p with some of the others They were all older than we One of these will bear to be dilated upon

His specialty was the art of Magic, so much so that he had actually written and published a little booklet on it, the front page of which bore his name with the title of Professor I had never before come across a schoolboy whose name had appeared in print, so that ic I htquestionable could possibly find place in the straight and upright ranks of printed letters? To be able to record one's oords in indelible ink--was that a slight thing? To stand unscreened yet unabashed, self-confessed before the world,--how could one withhold belief in the face of such supreot the types for the letters ofit seemed when I inked and pressed theive a lift in our carriage to this schoolfellow and author-friend of ours This led to visiting terreat at theatricals With his help we erected a stage on our wrestling ground with painted paper stretched over a split baative fro acted thereon

A coe at all

The author of this has already been introduced to the reader in these pages He was none other than my nephew Satya Those who behold his present calm and sedate demeanour would be shocked to learn of the tricks of which he was the originator

[Illustration: Satya]

The event of which I a happened soician friend had told of so s that I was consumed with curiosity to see them for myself But the materials of which he spoke were invariably so rare or distant that one could hardly hope to get hold of them without the help of Sindbad the sailor Once, as it happened, the Professor forgot his Who could ever believe that a seed dipped and dried twenty-one times in the juice of a species of cactus would sprout and flower and fruit all in the space of an hour?

I was deter withal to doubt the assurance of a Professor whose naardener to furnish me with a plentiful supply of the milky juice, and betook myself, on a Sunday afternoon, to our mystic nook in a corner of the roof terrace, to experio I rapt in rown-up reader will probably not wait to ask me the result In the meantime, I little knew that Satya, in another corner, had, in the space of an hour, caused to root and sprout a mystical plant of his own creation This was to bear curious fruit later on

After the day of this experiradually came to perceive He would not sit on the saht shy of me

One day, all of a sudden, he proposed that each one in turn should jump off the bench in our schoolroom He wanted to observe the differences in style, he said Such scientific curiosity did not appear queer in a professor of ic Everyone jumped, so did I He shook his head with a subdued ”h' further out of hiood friends of his wanted to make our acquaintance and asked us to accouardians had no objection, so off ent The crowd in the rooerness to hearor two Mere child as I was I could hardly have bellowed like a bull ”Quite a sweet voice,” they all agreed

When refreshments were put before us they sat round and watched us eat

I was bashful by nature and not used to strange co the attendance of our servant Iswar left ood They all seemed impressed with the delicacy of ot some curiously warm letters from our Professor which revealed the whole situation And here let the curtain fall

I subsequently learnt froo seed, he had successfully convinced the Professor that I was dressed as a boy by our guardians , but that really this was only a disguise To those who are curious in regard to iirl is supposed to jump with her left foot forward, and this is what I had done on the occasion of the Professor's trial I little realised at the time what a tremendously false step mine had been!

(13) _My Father_

Shortly afterabout So it is no exaggeration to say that in my early childhood I hardly knew him He would now and then con servants hoer toPanjabi servant naot froh hiner, but a Panjabi to boot,--onder he stole our hearts away?

We had the same reverence for the whole Panjabi nation as for Bhima and Arjuna of the Mahabharata They arriors; and if they had soht and lost, that was clearly the enelorious to have Lenu, of the Panjab, in our very holass case, which, ound up, rocked on blue-painted silken waves to the tinkling of ahard for the loan of this to display its ed in the house as ere, anything savouring of foreign parts had a peculiar charm for me This was one of the reasons why I made so much of Lenu This was also the reason why Gabriel, the Jeith his eaberdine, who came to sell _attars_ and scented oils, stirred y trousers and knapsacks and bundles, wrought onmind a fearful fascination