United States or Montserrat ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Tooni thought the baba should have inherited his mother's language with his blue eyes and his white skin. Meanwhile, Sonny Sahib, playing every morning and evening under the peepul-tree, learned to talk in the tongue of the little brown boys who played there too. When Sonny Sahib was four he could drive the big black hairy buffaloes home from the village outskirts to be milked.
'Very good said the ayah submissively, and watched the doctor out of sight. Then she insisted holding the rupees, she could insist that the goat-keeper should bring his goat into the hut to milk it; there was more safety, Tooni thought, in the hut. While he milked it Tooni sat upon the ground, hugging her knees, and thought. The memsahib had said nothing all this time, had known nothing.
In quite a short time in Rubbulgurh, where there is no winter, two years is a very little while Sonny Sahib grew too big for even this adaptation of his garments; and then Tooni took him to Sheik Uddin, the village tailor, and gave Sheik Uddin long and careful directions about making clothes for him.
'It is fifty thousand miles, said Tooni, who had an imagination; 'and the woods are full of tigers. The gates of Lalpore were shut, and all about her walls the yellow sandy plains stretched silent and empty. There did not seem to be so much as a pariah dog outside. Some pipal-trees looked over the walls, and a couple of very antiquated cannon looked through them, but nothing stirred.
Tooni, wiping away her helpless tears with the edge of her head covering, had said, 'Na, memsahib, na! and stroked the hot hand that pointed, and then the mistress had forgotten again. As to the little pink baby, three days old, it blinked and throve and slept as if it had been born in its father's house to luxury and rejoicing.
Later on she taught him all the English words she remembered herself, which were three, 'bruss' and 'wass' and 'isstockin', her limited but very useful vocabulary as lady's-maid. He learned them very well, but he continued to know only three, and he did not use them very often, which Tooni found strange.
There would be no more shooting, and the Nana Sahib would let them all go away in boats; that was good khaber good news. Tooni wondered, as she put the baby's clothes together in one bundle, and her own few possessions together in another, whether it was to be believed. The Nana Sahib so hated the English; had not the guns spoken of his hate these twenty-one days?
He was a merry little fellow, blue-eyed, with very yellow wavy hair, exactly, Tooni often thought, like his mother's. It was a grief to Tooni, who could not understand it; but Sonny Sahib perversely refused to talk in his own tongue. She did all she could to help him.
Then Tooni had lain down at the doctor-sahib's feet, and tried to place one of them upon her head, and said that indeed she was not a worthless one, but that she was very old and she feared the guns; so many of the sahibs had died from the guns! She, Tooni, did not wish to die from a gun, and would the Presence, in the great mercy of his heart, tell her whether there would be any more shooting?
'The memsahib will never be better, said Tooni, sorrowfully; 'her rice is finished in the earth. The memsahib will die. She agreed to go to the ghat, though, and went back into the hut to wait for the ox-cart while Abdul cooked a meal on the powder-blackened ground with the last of the millet, and gave thanks to Allah. There was no room for Tooni to ride when they started.
Word Of The Day