Heaven knows that I had no intention of touching the child’s work then or later; but, that evening, a stroll through the garden brought me unawares full on it; so that I trampled, before I knew, marigold-heads, dust-bank, and fragments of broken soap dish into confusion past all hope of mending.  Next morning, I came upon Muhammad Din crying softly to himself over the ruin I had wrought.  Some one had cruelly told him that the Sahib was very angry with him for spoiling the garden, and had scattered his rubbish, using bad language the while.  Muhammad Din laboured for an hour at effacing every trace of the dust bank and pottery fragments, and it was with a tearful and apologetic face that he said, ‘Talaam, Tahib,’ when I came home from office.  A hasty inquiry resulted in Imam Din informing Muhammad Din that, by my singular favour, he was permitted to disport himself as he pleased.  Whereat the child took heart and fell to tracing the ground-plan of an edifice which was to eclipse the marigold-polo-ball creation.

For some months the chubby little eccentricity revolved in his humble orbit among the castor-oil bushes and in the dust; always fashioning magnificent palaces from stale flowers thrown away by the bearer, smooth water-worn pebbles, bits of broken glass, and feathers pulled, I fancy, from my fowls—­always alone, and always crooning to himself.

A gaily-spotted sea-shell was dropped one day close to the last of his little buildings; and I looked that Muhammad Din should build something more than ordinarily splendid on the strength of it.  Nor was I disappointed He meditated for the better part of an hour, and his crooning rose to a jubilant song.  Then he began tracing in the dust.  It would certainly be a wondrous palace, this one, for it was two yards long and a yard broad in ground-plan.  But the palace was never completed.

Next day there was no Muhammad Din at the head of the carriage-drive, and no ‘Talaam, Tahib’ to welcome my return.  I had grown accustomed to the greeting, and its omission troubled me.  Next day Imam Din told me that the child was suffering slightly from fever and needed quinine.  He got the medicine, and an English Doctor.

‘They have no stamina, these brats,’ said the Doctor, as he left Imam Din’s quarters.

A week later, though I would have given much to have avoided it, I met on the road to the Mussulman burying-ground Imam Din, accompanied by one other friend, carrying in his arms, wrapped in a white cloth, all that was left of little Muhammad Din.

THE FINANCES OF THE GODS

The evening meal was ended in Dhunni Bhagat’s Chubara, and the old priests were smoking or counting their beads.  A little naked child pattered in, with its mouth wide open, a handful of marigold flowers in one hand, and a lump of conserved tobacco in the other.  It tried to kneel and make obeisance to Gobind, but it was so fat that it fell forward on its shaven head, and rolled on its side, kicking and gasping, while the marigolds tumbled one way and the tobacco the other.  Gobind laughed, set it up again, and blessed the marigold flowers as he received the tobacco.