Page:The Spoilt Child.djvu/206



cutting of the rice-crops had already begun in the Soonderbunds: boats were constantly coming and going with their loads. There was water everywhere: here and there were raised bamboo platforms to serve as refuges whence the ryots could watch their crops; but, for all their produce the people were no better off. On the one hand there was the mahajan, who made them advances, to be satisfied, on the other, the zemindar's paik with his extortion: if they succeeded in selling their crops well, they might perhaps have two full meals a day, otherwise all they had to depend upon was fish or vegetables, or what they could earn as day labourers. On the higher lands only the autumn rice-crops are grown, the spring crops being generally raised on the lower lands. Rice is very easily grown in Bengal, but the crops have many obstacles to contend with: they are liable to destruction from excess of rain and from want of it; then there are the locusts and all kinds of destructive insects, and the late autumn storms: the rice-crop, moreover, requires continual attention for without very great care being exercised, blight attack the plants.

Bahulya, after looking after his little property all the morning, was sitting in his verandah smoking, a bundle of papers before him. Near him were seated certain scoundrels of the deepest dye, and some persons connected with the courts: the subject of their conversation was the law as administered by the magistrate, and certain suits-at-law