When Sonny Sahib was four he could drive the big black hairy buffaloes home from the village outskirts to be milked.  Abdul walked beside him, but Sonny Sahib did all the shouting and the beating with a bit of stick, which the buffaloes must have privately smiled at when they felt it on their muddy flanks, that is if a buffalo ever smiles, which one cannot help thinking doubtful.  Sonny Sahib liked buffalo milk, and had it every day for his dinner with chupatties, and sometimes, for a treat, a bit of roast kid.  Chupatties are like pancakes with everything that is nice left out of them, and were very popular in Rubbulgurh.  Sonny Sahib thought nothing in the world could be better, except the roast kid.  On days of festival Abdul always gave him a pice to buy sweetmeats with, and he drove a hard bargain with either Wahid Khan or Sheik Luteef, who were rival dealers.  Sonny Sahib always got more of the sticky brown balls of sugar and butter and cocoa-nut for his pice than any of the other boys.  Wahid Khan and Sheik Luteef both thought it brought them luck to sell to him.  But afterwards Sonny Sahib invariably divided his purchase with whoever happened to be his bosom friend at the time—­the daughter of Ram Dass, the blacksmith, or the son of Chundaputty, the beater of brass—­in which he differed altogether from the other boys, and which made it fair perhaps.

At six Sonny Sahib began to find the other boys unsatisfactory in a number of ways.  He was tired of making patterns in the dust with marigolds for one thing.  He wanted to pretend.  It was his birthright to pretend, in a large active way, and he couldn’t carry it out.  The other boys didn’t care about making believe soldiers, and running and hiding and shouting and beating Sonny Sahib’s tom-tom, which made a splendid drum.  They liked beating the tom-tom, but they always wanted to sit round in a ring and listen to it, which Sonny Sahib thought very poor kind of fun indeed.  They wouldn’t even pretend to be elephants, or horses, or buffaloes.  Sonny Sahib had to represent them all himself; and it is no wonder that with a whole menagerie, as it were, upon his shoulders, he grew a little tired sometimes.  Also he was the only boy in Rubbulgurh who cared to climb a tree that had no fruit on it, or would venture beyond the lower branches even for mangoes or tamarinds.  And one day when he found a weaver-bird’s nest in a bush with three white eggs in it, a splendid nest, stock-full of the fireflies that light the little hen at night, he showed it privately first to Hurry Ghose, and then to Sumpsi Din, and lastly to Budhoo, the sweeper’s son; and not one of them could he coax to carry off a single egg in company with him.  Sonny Sahib recognised the force of public opinion, and left the weaver-bird to her house-keeping in peace, but he felt privately injured by it.

Certainly the other boys could tell wonderful stories—­stories of princesses and fairies and demons—­Sumpsi Din’s were the best—­that made Sonny Sahib’s blue eyes widen in the dark, when they all sat together on a charpoy by the door of the hut, and the stars glimmered through the tamarind-trees.  A charpoy is a bed, and everybody in Rubbulgurh puts one outside, for sociability, in the evening.  Not much of a bed, only four short rickety legs held together with knotted string, but it answers very well.