The Kipling Reader: Selections from the Books of Rudyard KiplingKipling, Rudyard
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The Kipling Reader: Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling
Kipling, Rudyard
Animals -- Fiction; English poetry; India -- Social life and customs -- Literary collections; Readers; Short stories, English
He left early, thinking over what Tods had said. Now, it was
obviously impossible for the Legal Member to play with a _bunnia's_
monkey, by way of getting understanding; but he did better. He made
inquiries, always bearing in mind the fact that the real native--not
the hybrid, University-trained mule--is as timid as a colt, and
little by little, he coaxed some of the men whom the measure
concerned most intimately to give in their views, which squared very
closely with Tods' evidence.
So the Bill was amended in that clause; and the Legal Member was
filled with an uneasy suspicion that Native Members represent very
little except the Orders they carry on their bosoms. But he put the
thought from him as illiberal. He was a most liberal man.
After a time the news spread through the bazars that Tods had got the
Bill recast in the tenure-clause, and, if Tods' Mamma had not
interfered, Tods would have made himself sick on the baskets of fruit
and pistachio nuts and Cabuli grapes and almonds that crowded the
verandah. Till he went Home, Tods ranked some few degrees before the
Viceroy in popular estimation. But for the little life of him Tods
could not understand why.
In the Legal Member's private-paper-box still lies the rough draft of
the Sub-Montane Tracts _Ryotwary_ Revised Enactment; and opposite the
twenty-second clause, pencilled in blue chalk, and signed by the
Legal Member are the words '_Tods' Amendment_.'
THE STORY OF MUHAMMAD DIN
Who is the happy man? He that sees in his own house, at home, little
children crowned with dust, leaping and falling and crying.--
_Munichandra_, translated by Professor Peterson.
The polo-ball was an old one, scarred, chipped, and dinted. It stood
on the mantelpiece among the pipe-stems which Imam Din, _khitmatgar_,
was cleaning for me.
'Does the Heaven-born want this ball?' said Imam Din deferentially.
The Heaven-born set no particular store by it; but of what use was a
polo-ball to a _khitmatgar_?
'By Your Honour's favour, I have a little son. He has seen this ball,
and desires it to play with, I do not want it for myself.'
No one would for an instant accuse portly old Imam Din of wanting to
play with polo-balls. He carried out the battered thing into the
verandah; and there followed a hurricane of joyful squeaks, a patter
of small feet, and the _thud-thud-thud_ of the ball rolling along
the ground. Evidently the little son had been waiting outside the
door to secure his treasure. But how had he managed to see that
polo-ball?
Next day, coming back from office half an hour earlier than usual, I
was aware of a small figure in the dining-room--a tiny, plump figure
in a ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, halfway down
the tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth,
crooning to itself as it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this
was the 'little son.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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