Page 25 - English Class 08
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will come in and my seventeenth chapter will never be finished!” At which exact moment
the Kabuliwala 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.
As he was about to leave, he asked: “And where is the little girl, Sir?”
And I, thinking that Mini must get rid of her false fear, had her brought out.
She stood by my chair and looked at the Kabuliwala and his bag. He offered her nuts and
raisins, but she would not be tempted and only clung more closer to me with all her doubts
increased.
Which dry fruits you like most?
This was their first meeting.
One morning, however, not many days later, as I was leaving the house, I was startled to
find Mini, seated on a bench near the door, laughing and talking with the great Kabuliwala at
her feet. In all her life, it appeared, my small daughter had never found so patient a listener,
save her father. And already the corner of her little sari was stuffed with almonds and
raisins, the gift of her visitor. “Why did you give her those?” I said, and taking out an eight-
anna bit, I handed it to him. The man accepted the money without demur , and slipped it
into his pocket.
Alas, on my return an hour later, I found the unfortunate coin had made twice its own
worth of trouble! For the Kabuliwala had given it to Mini; and her mother, catching sight
of the bright round object, had pounced on the child with: “Where did you get that eight-
anna bit?”
“The Kabuliwala gave it me,” said Mini cheerfully.
pedlar : a person sell things travelling
“The Kabuliwala gave it you!” cried her mother from place to place
much shocked. “O Mini! How could you take it demure : shy
from him?”
I, entering at the moment, saved her from impending disaster and proceeded to make
my own inquiries.
It was not the first or the second time, I found, that the two had met. The Kabuliwala
had overcome the child’s first terror by a judicious bribery of nuts and almonds and the two
were now great friends.
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