Page:Gora - Rabindranath Tagore.pdf/21

Rh formerly been Radharani, but Paresh Babu's wife had changed it to the less aggressively orthodox name of Sucharita.

When Satish was about to go, Binoy asked him: "Can you go all alone?" to which the little fellow answered with injured pride: "I always do!" When Binoy said: "Let me see you home," he became quite distressed at such a slight on his manliness, and said: "Why should you? I can easily get along by myself," and he began to give all kinds of precedents to show how usual it was for him to go about alone.

Why Binoy should nevertheless insist on going with him to the door of his house was more than the boy could fathom.

Further, when Satish asked him to come in with him Binoy resolutely refused, saying: "No, not now. I will come another day."

On returning home Binoy took out the envelope and read and re-read the address written on it so minutely that he soon knew every stroke and flourish of it by heart, Then he placed it, together with the contents, in his box with such care,—one could feel sure that there was no chance of this money ever being used, even in the direst emergency.

 

a dark evening, during the rains, the sky lowered heavy with its load of moisture. Beneath the silent sway of the dull, drab stretch of cloud, the city of Calcutta lay motionless like a huge disconsolate dog curled up with its head resting on its tail. Since the previous night it had been drizzling steadily, persistently enough to make the streets muddy, yet not with sufficient determination to wash the mud away. The rain had ceased at four o'clock that afternoon, but still the clouds looked threatening. It was in this gloomy state of the weather, when it was as unpleasant to stay indoors as it was unsafe to venture out, that two young men were seated on wicker stools on the damp roof-terrace of a three-storied building.

On this terrace, when they had been small, these two friends had played together on return from school; before their examinations it was here that they had loudly committed their lessons to memory, pacing up and down as though in a frenzy; and in the hot weather it was here that they used take their evening meals on returning from college, often