Page:Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer - A History of the Renaissance in Bengal.djvu/83

 not from Mr Hare’s house but from the confectioner’s shop, he burst into tears, and said that he was suffering from extreme hunger. On this he was served by the shopkeeper with a good meal of sweetmeats. This was not the only instance of his being thus regaled. There followed many an evening, when, at Mr Hare’s orders, the confectioner held before the half-famished boy his basket full of sweets.

Two months passed in this way, Ramtanu being the pursuer, and David Hare the pursued, after which the lifter, being convinced that the boy was really anxious to learn English, and that it was cruel to put him off any longer, promised him a free education. But now a new obstacle presented itself. Mr Hare wanted his boys to be neat and clean, and so particular was he in this respect that it was almost his daily practice to stand at the school gate with a towel in hand, and rub them clean both on their entrance in the morning, and on their exit in the afternoon. He had also made it a rule that the guardian of each free boy should, at the time of his admission, bind himself by a written agreement to be liable to a fine whenever his ward came to school untidy, and the existence of this rule for some time stood in Ramtanu’s way, for Kesava objected to sign the bond, inasmuch as his brother, on his admission into school, would live in Calcutta, and not with him at Chetla, and it would be impossible for him to see to the boy’s cleanliness. He was not the man to enter into an agreement which he knew he could not act up to, and as Mr Hare was not disposed to make allowance for such scruples, Ramtanu’s admission into any of his schools was for the time out of the question. But there was an influence at work, to which Kesava, had soon to yield. Gaur Mohan showed him that he was making too much of the difficulty, and he at last consented to sign the bond.