Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book IIKipling, Rudyard
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Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II
Kipling, Rudyard
Poetry; Short stories
At the end of the first day Punch demanded to be set down in England,
which he was certain must be close at hand. Next day there was a merry
breeze, and Punch was very sick. "When I come back to Bombay," said
Punch on his recovery, "I will come by the road--in a broom-gharri.
This is a very naughty ship."
The Swedish boatswain consoled him, and he modified his opinions as
the voyage went on. There was so much to see and to handle and ask
questions about that Punch nearly forgot the ayah and Meeta and the
hamal, and with difficulty remembered a few words of the Hindustani
once his second-speech.
But Judy was much worse. The day before the steamer reached
Southampton, Mamma asked her if she would not like to see the ayah
again. Judy's blue eyes turned to the stretch of sea that had
swallowed all her tiny past, and she said: "Ayah! What ayah?"
Mamma cried over her, and Punch marveled. It was then that he heard
for the first time Mamma's passionate appeal to him never to let Judy
forget Mamma. Seeing that Judy was young, ridiculously young, and that
Mamma, every evening for four weeks past, had come into the cabin to
sing her and Punch to sleep with a mysterious tune that he called
"Sonny, my soul," Punch could not understand what Mamma meant. But he
strove to do his duty, for the moment Mamma left the cabin, he said to
Judy: "Ju, you bemember Mamma?"
"'Torse I do," said Judy.
"Then always bemember Mamma, 'r else I won't give you the paper ducks
that the red-haired Captain Sahib cut out for me."
So Judy promised always to "bemember Mamma."
Many and many a time was Mamma's command laid upon Punch, and Papa
would say the same thing with an insistence that awed the child.
"You must make haste and learn to write, Punch," said Papa, "and then
you'll be able to write letters to us in Bombay."
"I'll come into your room," said Punch, and Papa choked.
Papa and Mamma were always choking in those days. If Punch took Judy
to task for not "bemembering," they choked. If Punch sprawled on the
sofa in the Southampton lodging-house and sketched his future in
purple and gold, they choked; and so they did if Judy put up her mouth
for a kiss.
Through many days all four were vagabonds on the face of the earth:
Punch with no one to give orders to, Judy too young for anything, and
Papa and Mamma grave, distracted, and choking.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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