Page:Stories of Bengalee life - Prabhat Kumar Mukerji.pdf/18

6 lasted him a fortnight. He made enquiries about the "other things" but discovered that a decent bottle could not be had for less than three rupees. So he stopped at tobacco. When at the end of the year he found that briefs were just as rare as at the beginning, although he had been faithfully smoking hooka all the time, he thought of giving it up out of sheer desperation. He did not smoke for a day or two and then found that he had caught a Tartar. However anxious he might be to give up his hooka, the hooka would not give him up. So he took to it again but this time it was only with the four-annas a seer quality of tobacco.

The clock struck ten. It being a Sunday, there was no bother about going to Court. Subodh smoked on and gradually fell into a brown study. The little patrimony that he had brought with him was gone long ago. Then he began to sell his wife's jewellery—one article at a time—but that stock was fast coming to an end also. How much longer could he go on in this way? What would become of him afterwards? Latterly he had been diligently studying the "Wanted" columns of different newspapers and had sent off shoals of applications, but so far without success. Expenses were increasing every day but the income was next to nothing. He made a little money now and then by executing commissions but that was not enough. Subodh