All day
long he played and crept in this under the sacred peepul-tree in
the middle of the village among brown-skinned babies who wore no
clothes at all--only a string of beads round their fat little
waists--and who sometimes sat down in silence and made a solemn
effort to comprehend him.
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. The old man listened to
her for an hour, and waggled his beard, and said that he quite
understood; it should be as she wished. But Sheik Uddin had never
seen any English people, and did not understand at all. He
accepted Tooni's theories, but he measured and cut according to his
own. Sheik Uddin could not afford to suffer in his reputation for
the foolish notions of a woman. So he made Sonny Sahib a pair of
narrow striped calico trousers, and a long tight-fitting little
coat with large bunches of pink roses on it, in what was the
perfectly correct fashion for Mahomedan little boys of Rubbulgurh
and Rajputana generally. Tooni paid Sheik Uddin tenpence, and
admired her purchase very much.
Pages:
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33