Page:Tales of Bengal (Sita and Santa Chattopadhyay).djvu/17



summer vacation was over and the schools and colleges were reopening one by one. Young boys, who had just passed the Matriculation Examination, were all starting for the city to get themselves admitted to one or other of the many colleges. They tried to look extremely serious with the stamp of newly found wisdom upon their young faces. In this respect, they beat even the more advanced students, so self-important was their bearing and general air. It was their Day; the day when they, after all, did cross the line that had hitherto kept them within the limits of boyhood. But now they looked back upon their previous life, with eyes full, as it were, of contempt, and presented themselves before the world, inwardly towering over the rest like the Colossus of Rhodes.

The third and intermediate class carriages of the railway train were choked with people of diverse characters. Passengers in the women's compartment were also conspicuous by their number and their marvellous capacity to accommodate themselves in a cage, ten foot by five. They were quite happy and at home in the little space, while the Railway Company's notice "To seat 10" stared down at them aghast and scandalised.

It was mid-night. The train was rumbling along the Loop Line of the E. I. Railway with its load of sleepless passengers, while the silent night trembled at the intrusion. Outside, the faint glimmer of a star or two, the flicker of the vigilant firefly and, close to the line, piles of burning coal, were all the diversion the eye could secure in that flood of inky nothingness. Dense black clouds were covering up the sky very rapidly, and only now and then a shining flash of