Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/93

 In his story of the fruit-seller, in one of his prose-books, which reads very like a chapter directly out of his own experience, we have a small daughter of the writer himself, Mini, as the chief figure. Her childish desires, her mischief, and her drollery are contrasted with the tall form of the Kabuli hawker or fruit-seller who brings grapes and raisins and apricots to the door. The sack which he carries is like Fortunatus's purse, a wonder-worker; to the child's mind it is mysterious and inexhaustible; and it becomes the Kabuli's joke, when Mini asks him what there is inside it, to reply that it contains an elephant.

Such was the beginning of the friendship between the queerly assorted pair, a friendship