Page:The Spoilt Child.djvu/34

Rh front like the front of Ganesh, a delicate muslin shawl neatly folded over his shoulders, and his cheeks swollen with pán, was walking impatiently up and down, calling out to his servant: "Ho, there, Hari! I must get to Bally quick; you must hire a passing boat for me for four pice." Rich men's servants are often very disrespectful, and Hari made answer: "Sir, that is just like you! I had only just sat down to take my food and I have now had to throw it away and leave it in order to attend to your repeated calls. If there had been any boat going down-stream, it might have been hired for a small sum, but it is flood-tide just now, and the boatmen will have to work hard rowing and steering. You might get across for three or four pice if you would arrange to go with others. I cannot possibly hire a passing boat for you for four pice; you might as well ask me to make barley-meal cakes without water." Baburam Babu scowled and said: "You are a very insolent fellow; if you speak like that to me again, you get a sound smacking." Now the lower orders of Bengalees tremble even if they make a slip, so Hari endured the rebuke, and quaking all over said to his master: "Sir, how can I possibly find a boat? I had no intention of being insolent to you."

While he was still speaking, a green boat that was being towed up the river on its return journey, approached the ghât where they were. After a long argument with the steersman of the boat a bargain was struck, and he agreed to take them across for eight annas. Baburam then got into the boat with his servant and his messenger. When they had got some way on their journey, he began looking about him in every direction, and said to his servant: "Hari, this is a fine boat we have got! Hi, steersman! whose house is that over there? Ho! surely that is a sugar factory. Ha! Now prepare me a pipe of