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Bishamber tried to calm her agitation, but she flung herself on the bed, and cried: "Phatik, my darling, my darling." Phatik stopped his restless movements for a moment. His hands ceased beating up and down. He said: "Eh?" The mother cried again: "Phatik, my darling, my darling." Phatik very slowly turned his head and, without seeing anybody, said: "Mother, the holidays have come."
He rushed at Makban, and hammered him with blows: "Take that" he cried, "and that, and that, for telling lies." His mother took Makhan's side in a moment, and pulled Phatik away, beating him with her hands. When Phatik pushed her aside, she shouted out: "What I you little villain! would you hit your own mother?" It was just at this critical juncture that the grey-haired stranger arrived.
She was in daily fear that he would either drown Makhan some day in the river, or break his head in a fight, or run him into some danger or other. At the same time she was somewhat distressed to see Phatik's extreme eagerness to get away. Phatik, as soon as all was settled, kept asking his uncle every minute when they were to start.
Bishamber wiped the tears from his own eyes, and took Phatik's lean and burning hands in his own, and sat by him through the night. The boy began again to mutter. At last his voice became excited: "Mother," he cried, "don't beat me like that! Mother! I am telling the truth!" The next day Phatik became conscious for a short time. He turned his eyes about the room, as if expecting some one to come.
Thus it is that we send the little body of the child floating on the back of sleep over the still water of time, and then in the morning read a few verses of incantation to restore him to the world of life and light. Phatik Chakravorti was ringleader among the boys of the village. A new mischief got into his head.
At last, with an air of disappointment, his head sank back on the pillow. He turned his face to the wall with a deep sigh. Bishamber knew his thoughts, and, bending down his head, whispered: "Phatik, I have sent for your mother." The day went by. The doctor said in a troubled voice that the boy's condition was very critical. Phatik began to cry out; "By the mark! three fathoms.
But just as the fun was about to begin, Makhan, Phatik's younger brother, sauntered up, and sat down on the log in front of them all without a word. The boys were puzzled for a moment. He was pushed, rather timidly, by one of the boys and told to get up but he remained quite unconcerned. He appeared like a young philosopher meditating on the futility of games. Phatik was furious.
No one could understand it, but it preyed upon his mind continually. There was no more backward boy in the whole school than Phatik. He gaped and remained silent when the teacher asked him a question, and like an overladen ass patiently suffered all the blows that came down on his back. When other boys were out at play, he stood wistfully by the window and gazed at the roofs of the distant houses.
The next morning Phatik was nowhere to be seen. All searches in the neighbourhood proved futile. The rain had been pouring in torrents all night, and those who went out in search of the boy got drenched through to the skin. At last Bisbamber asked help from the police. At the end of the day a police van stopped at the door before the house. It was still raining and the streets were all flooded.
Phatik heard her words, and sobbed out loud: "Uncle, I was just going home; but they dragged me back again." The fever rose very high, and all that night the boy was delirious. Bishamber brought in a doctor. Phatik opened his eyes flushed with fever, and looked up to the ceiling, and said vacantly: "Uncle, have the holidays come yet? May I go home?"
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