My five years' old daughter Mini cannot live without chattering. I
really believe that in all her life she has not wasted a minute in
silence. Her mother is often vexed at this, and would stop her prattle,
but I would not. To see Mini quiet is unnatural, and I cannot bear it
long. And so my own talk with her is always lively.
One morning, for instance, when I was in the midst of the seventeenth
chapter of my new novel, my little Mini stole into the room, and putting
her hand into mine, said: "Father! Ramdayal the door-keeper calls a crow
a krow! He doesn't know anything, does he?"
Before I could explain to her the differences of language in this world,
she was embarked on the full tide of another subject. "What do you
think, Father? Bhola says there is an elephant in the clouds, blowing
water out of his trunk, and that is why it rains!"
And then, darting off anew, while I sat still making ready some reply to
this last saying: "Father! what relation is Mother to you?"
With a grave face I contrived to say: "Go and play with Bhola, Mini! I
am busy!"
The window of my room overlooks the road. The child had seated herself
at my feet near my table, and was playing softly, drumming on her knees.
I was hard at work on my seventeenth chapter, where Pratap Singh, the
hero, had just caught Kanchanlata, the heroine, in his arms, and was
about to escape with her by the third-story window of the castle, when
all of a sudden Mini left her play, and ran to the window, crying: "A
Cabuliwallah! a Cabuliwallah!" Sure enough in the street below was a
Cabuliwallah, passing slowly along. He wore the loose, soiled clothing
of his people, with a tall turban; there was a bag on his back, and he
carried boxes of grapes in his hand.
I cannot tell what were my daughter's feelings at the sight of this man,
but she began to call him loudly. "Ah!" I thought, "he will come in, and
my seventeenth chapter will never be finished!" At which exact moment
the Cabuliwallah turned, and looked up at the child. When she saw this,
overcome by terror, she fled to her mother's protection and
disappeared. She had a blind belief that inside the bag, which the big
man carried, there were perhaps two or three other children like
herself. The pedlar meanwhile entered my doorway and greeted me with a
smiling face.
So precarious was the position of my hero and my heroine, that my first
impulse was to stop and buy something, since the man had been called. I
made some small purchases, and a conversation began about Abdurrahman,
the Russians, the English, and the Frontier Policy.