Page:Broken Ties and Other Stories.pdf/46

 ordering about of Satish and making him fetch and carry was deliberately directed at me.

The Swami went on resting. All the guests were duly served by the householder with a meal of kedgeree. From five o'clock the kirtans started again and went on till ten in the night.

When I got Satish alone at last, I said to him: ‘Look here, Satish! You have been brought up in the atmosphere of freedom from infancy. How have you managed to get yourself entangled in this kind of bondage to-day? Is Uncle Jagamohan, then, so utterly dead?’

Partly because the playfulness of affection prompted it, partly, perhaps, because precision of description required it, Satish used to reverse the first two syllables of my name and call me Visri.

‘Visri,’ he replied, ‘while Uncle was alive he gave me freedom in life’s field of work,—the freedom which the child gets in the playground. After his death it is he, again, who has given me freedom on the high seas of emotion,—the freedom which the child gains when it comes back to its mother’s arms. I have enjoyed to the full the freedom of life’s day-time; why should I now deprive myself of the freedom of its evening?