Page:Broken Ties and Other Stories.pdf/26

Rh Jagamohan was not a man to give way to emotion, but his eyes were wet as he turned to Satish and said: ‘The burden that this girl is bearing is ours.’

Then he said to the girl: ‘Mother, don’t be shy on my account. My schoolfellows used to call me “Mad Jagai,” and I am the same madcap even now.’

Then, without hesitation, he took the girl by both her hands, and raised her. The veil dropped from off her face.

The girl’s face was fresh and young, and there was no line of hardness or vice in it. The inner purity of her heart had not been stained, just as a speck of dust does not soil a flower. Jagamohan took Nonibala to his upper room, and said to her: ‘Mother, look what a state my room is in! The floor is all unswept. Everything is upside down; and as for myself, I have no fixed hour for my bath or my meals. Now that you have come to my house, everything will be put right, and even this mad Jagai will be made respectable.’

Nonibala had never felt before, even when her mother lived, how much one person could be to another; because her mother had looked upon her, not so much as a daughter, but as a young girl who had to be watched.