On days of festival Abdul always gave him a pice to buy
sweetmeats with, and he drove a hard bargain with either Wahid Khan
or Sheik Luteef, who were rival dealers. Sonny Sahib always got
more of the sticky brown balls of sugar and butter and cocoa-nut
for his pice than any of the other boys. Wahid Khan and Sheik
Luteef both thought it brought them luck to sell to him. But
afterwards Sonny Sahib invariably divided his purchase with whoever
happened to be his bosom friend at the time--the daughter of Ram
Dass, the blacksmith, or the son of Chundaputty, the beater of
brass--in which he differed altogether from the other boys, and
which made it fair perhaps.
At six Sonny Sahib began to find the other boys unsatisfactory in a
number of ways. He was tired of making patterns in the dust with
marigolds for one thing. He wanted to pretend. It was his
birthright to pretend, in a large active way, and he couldn't carry
it out. The other boys didn't care about making believe soldiers,
and running and hiding and shouting and beating Sonny Sahib's tom-
tom, which made a splendid drum. They liked beating the tom-tom,
but they always wanted to sit round in a ring and listen to it,
which Sonny Sahib thought very poor kind of fun indeed. They
wouldn't even pretend to be elephants, or horses, or buffaloes.
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