Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/635

1858.] butts him treacherously, and, leaping over his prostrate body, scampers, like Leigh Hunt’s pig in Smithfield Market, up all manner of figurative streets. Then you send for Dhye, and say, “Milk, or I shave your head!” Milk or death! And, lo, a miracle!—the “fount” again!—Baby is saved.

What was, then, the conjuration and the mighty magic? In the folds of her saree the dhye conceals leaves of chambeli, the Indian jessamine, roots of dhallapee, the jungle radish. She chews the chambeli, and hungry Baby, struggling for the “fount,” is insulted with apples of Sodom; she swallows a portion of dhallapee, and he is regaled as with the melting melons of Ceylon.

Some fine afternoon your ayah takes your little Johnny to stroll by the river’s bank,—to watch the green budgerows, as they glide, pulled by singing dandees (so the boatmen of Ganges are called) up to Patna,—to watch the brown corpses, as they float silently down from Benares. At night the ayah returns, wringing her hands. Where is your merry darling? She knows not. O Khodabund, go ask the evil spirits! O Sahib, go cry unto Grunga,—go accuse the greedy river, and say to the envious waters, “Give back my boy!” She had left him sitting on a stone, she says, counting the sailing corpses, while she went to find him a bluejay’s nest among the rocks; when she returned to the stone,—no Jonnee Sahib! “My golden image, who hath snatched him away? He that skipped and hummed like a singing-top, where is he gone?”—A month after that, your dandees capture a crocodile, and from his heathen maw recover a familiar coral necklace with an inscription on the clasp, —“To Johnny, on his birth-day.” A pair of little silver bangles, whose jocund jingling had once been happy household music to some poor Hindoo mother, have kept the necklace company.

Over against the gate of our compound the Baboo’s walks are bright with roses, and ixoras, and the creeping nagatallis; the Baboo’s park is shady with banians, and fragrant with sandal-trees, and imposing with tall peepuls, and cool with sparkling fountains; and Chinna Tumbe, the Little Brother, the brown apple of the Baboo’s eye, plays among the bamboos by the tank, just within the gate, and pelts the gold-fishes with mango-seeds. Presently comes along a pleasant peddler, all the way from Cabool, with a pretty bushy-tailed kitten of Persia in the hollow of his arm, and a cunning little mungooz cracking nuts on his shoulder. A score of tiny silver bells tinkle from a silken cord around Chinna Tumbe’s loins, and the silver whistle with which he calls his cockatoos is suspended from his neck by a chain of gold. So the pleasant peddler all the way from Cabool greets Chinna Tumbe merrily, saying, “See my pretty kitten, that knows a hundred tricks! and see my brave mungooz, that can kill cobras in fair fight! My Persian kitten for your silver bells, Chinna Tumbe, and my cunning mungooz for your golden chain!” And Chinna Tumbe laughs, and claps his hands, and dances for delight, and all his silver bells jingle gleefully. And the pleasant peddler all the way from Cabool says, “Step without the gate, Little Brother, if you would see my pretty kitten play tricks; if you would stroke my cunning mungooz, step without the gate; for I dare not pass within, lest my lord, the Baboo of many lacs, should be angry.” So Chinna Tumbe steps out into the road, and the pleasant peddler all the way from Cabool sets the Persian kitten on the ground, and rattles off some strange words, that sound very funnily to the Little Brother; and immediately the Persian kitten begins to run round after its bushy tail, faster and faster, faster and faster, a ring of yellow light. And Chinna Tumbe claps his hands, and cries, Wah, wah! and he dances for delight, and all his silver bells jingle gleefully. So the pleasant peddler addresses other strange and funny words to the ring of yellow light, and instantly it stands still,