Page:Indira and Other Stories.pdf/106

 remember, I happened to have a currency note of small value about me. I left it in their cottage."

"Will you excuse me for just one moment? I shall be back presently."

Radharani had kept the note carefully all this while. She took it out of the receptacle where it was stored, and returned.

"It was foolish," she said, "to leave a currency note like that with two poor women. They would think you had lost it."

"Not so," said Rukmini Kumar, "I scribbled the words 'for Radharani' on it in pencil. I also signed my assumed name, Rukmini Kumar Ray. Otherwise my new friends might deem it a duty to make search for me, and I wished to save them the trouble."

"Ah, sir," cried Radharani, "there was the offence you have so cruelly committed. Did you not think how unkind it was not to give a grateful girl the chance of thanking her benefactor all these years? See now, whether your Radharani had cause to seek for the friend who aided her in her adversity!"