I would frequently find myself sitting staring into the beyond. I always commenced with the clinking of those rupees. The sound is as real to me even now as when I first heard it. If a report starting miles away reaches me after some seconds, is it less a reality? It takes years for light to reach us from some distant planet. Is it less real because it has been years on the way? So I often saw that sahib as I see him now, as real to me as when I sat crouched in a corner of that room only a few feet from him. And the dear mama! How real she has always seemed! I have never thought of her but tears would come welling up from my heart. How I wished she could see me in my happiness! She surely would have smiled again. The little sister, always so cheerful even when she was hungry and tired! Our new mama, the good old faqir, all the scenes of the past, the hot dusty road, the separation from that sister, the losing her—what a queer strange kind of pain came into my whole body, a pain that never can be described, caused by the loss of those we dearly love; not a fleshy pain and not wholly in the mind, but of the soul, the heart, all the whole being, mental and physical; a choking, stifling, benumbing grief, that seems to stop the current of life and make us only wish for death. The time approached for my entering some school. Mr. Percy wrote a number of letters. Catalogues were received, and it was at length decided that I should go to the St. George’s School at Dhurm Thal, a hill station. Preparations then began. The darzies were set to work, more clothes were made, and what they could not make were ordered from an English shop. The boxwalas came with brushes for the hair, the teeth, for the fingers, for the clothes, the boots and the bath. I never knew there were so many kinds before. Then thread, needles, tape, buttons, for Mr. Percy said in selecting them, “You must have a ‘Bachelor’ just like what my mother made for me when I started for school,” and away he went to his room to bring the Bachelor that his mother had made years ago, and which he had kept as a treasure. Blessed is the boy who has a mother to make nice things for him, but alas for me, my mother I had scarcely known! He gave the Bachelor to the darzi for a pattern, with a strict injunction to be careful of it, as it was his mother’s gift. Said he, “This may come handy sometimes when you need a stitch, or find a button gone, for you should not be obliged always to depend on others.” Then came the boots, the tennis shoes, the balls and bats, some handsome books, papers, pens, ink, sealing wax, envelopes, etc. Nothing was omitted that he could think of. A spare room was devoted to this schoolboy outfit, and the articles were laid here and there over the room. Day after day he would say, “Now, Charles, let us go and look the things over,” and in we would go, and after a survey he would say, “Well, I don’t know what else you need!”