Page:Srikanta (Part 1).djvu/18

Srikanta He had a small dinghy of his own: in rain and in storm, by day and by night, he was always to be seen alone in his boat. Suddenly, one day, he would float down the stream in his dinghy sitting still at the helm, and for fifteen days he would not be heard of again. It was when he was starting on one of these rovings that I got an opportunity of cementing our acquaintance into something closer.

It had rained the whole day and was still raining. The heavy sky of July was overcast with dark clouds, and thick darkness had come on before it was fairly evening. My cousins and I had taken our meals early and according to our invariable custom had sat down before our books on a bed spread out in the sitting-room, to study by the light of a castor-oil lamp. Outside, my uncle was taking his evening siesta on a canvas cot at one end of the verandah, and at the other end old Ramkamal Bhatchaj, after his usual dose of opium, was smoking a hookah, his eyes closed in the gloom. The up-country servants in the portico outside were reading Tulsidas's Ramayana in a sing-song drawl, and we three cousins were attending to our studies in silence under the strict supervision of Mejda.

Chhotda, Jatinda, and I were students of the third and fourth classes, and our Mejda of grave aspect, having failed in the Entrance Examination twice, was now,