Page:The Spoilt Child.djvu/109

 On hearing this lampoon upon Baburam Babu, Tarkavagish was furious, and exclaimed: "Ha, ha! this is poetry indeed! Sarasvati in the flesh! Kalidas come to life again! What profound learning too has the great poet Konkan displayed! So precocious a boy cannot possibly live long. The metre too, -- astounding, -- never heard anything like it, -- it runs like a nursery rhyme! Now a man who is a Brahman and a pandit to boot will always speak good of a rich man: there is nothing gentlemanly in mere abuse." With these words, he got up in a rage, and would have left the place, but the assembled pandits expressed their full approval of his words, and urging him to stop and be calm, got him at last by sheer force to sit down again. Another pandit then skilfully introduced other topics, and ignoring what had passed began to sing the praises of Baburam Babu and Madhab Babu. A Brahman, being generally rather dense, cannot easily see when a joke is intended: through constant study of the Shástras, his mind moves solely in the region of the Shástras and has no practice in worldly matters. Tarkavagish however was soon mollified and amused himself with the subject in hand.