Page 27 - English Class 08

caterpillars. Even after all these years of experience, she is not able to overcome her terror.

So, she was full of doubts about the Kabuliwala and used to beg me to keep a watchful eye
on him. I tried to laugh her fear gently away, but then she would turn round on me seriously,
and ask me solemn questions—

“Were children never kidnapped?”

“Was it, then, not true that there was slavery in Kabul?”
“Was it so very absurd that this big man should be able to carry off a tiny child?”

Have you ever been so friendly
with any stranger?

I urged that, though not impossible, it was highly improbable. But this was not enough,
and her dread persisted. As it was indefinite, however, it did not seem right to forbid the

man from coming to the house, and the intimacy went on unchecked.
Once a year, in the middle of January, Rahmun, the Kabuliwala, was in the habit of

returning to his country, and as the time approached he would be very busy, going from
house to house collecting his debts. This year, however, he could always find time to come
and see Mini. It would have seemed to an outsider that there was some conspiracy between
the two, for when he could not come in the morning, he would appear in the evening.

Even to me it was a little startling now and then, in the corner of a dark room, suddenly
to see this tall, loose-garmented, much bebagged man; but when Mini would run in smiling,

with her “O Kabuliwala! Kabuliwala!” and the two friends, so far apart in age, would subside
into their old laughter and their old jokes, I felt reassured.

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