Alas, on my return an hour later, I found the unfortunate coin had made twice its own worth of trouble! For the Kabuliwalla had given it to Mini, and her mother catching sight of the bright round object, had pounced on the child with: ‘Where did you get that eight-anna bit?’

‘The Kabuliwalla gave it to me,’ said Mini cheerfully.

‘The Kabuliwalla gave it to you!’ cried her mother much shocked. ‘Oh, Mini! how could you take it from him?’

I, entering at the moment, saved her from impending disaster, and proceeded to make my own inquiries.

It was not the first or second time, I found, that the two had met. The Kabuliwalla had overcome the child’s first terror by a judicious bribery of nuts and almonds, and the two were now great friends.

They had many quaint jokes, which afforded them much amusement. Seated in front of him, looking down on his gigantic frame in all her tiny dignity, Mini would ripple her face with laughter, and begin: ‘O Kabuliwalla, Kabuliwalla, what have you got in your bag?’

And he would reply, in the nasal accents of the mountaineer: ‘An elephant!’ Not much cause for merriment, perhaps; but how they both enjoyed the witticism! And for me, this child’s talk with a grown-up man had always in it something strangely fascinating.

Then the Kabuliwalla, not to be behindhand, would take his turn: ‘Well, little one, and when are you going to the father-in-law’s house?’

Now most small Bengali maidens have heard long ago about the father-in-law’s house; but we, being a little newfangled, had kept these things from our child, and Mini at this question must have been a trifle bewildered. But she would not show it, and with ready tact replied: ‘Are you going there?’

Amongst men of the Kabuliwalla’s class, however, it is well known that the words father-in-law’s house have a double meaning. It is a euphemism for jail, the place where we are well cared for, at no expense to ourselves. In this sense would the sturdy pedlar take my daughter’s question. ‘Ah,’ he would say, shaking his fist at an invisible policeman, ‘I will thrash my father-in-law!’ Hearing this, and picturing the poor discomfited relative, Mini would go off into peals of laughter, in which her formidable friend would join.

These were autumn mornings, the very time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very name of another country, my heart would go out to it, and at the sight of a foreigner in the streets, I would fall to weaving a network of dreams—the mountains, the glens, and the forests of his distant home, with his cottage in its setting, and the free and independent life of far-away wilds. Perhaps the scenes of travel conjure themselves up before me, and pass and repass in my imagination all the more vividly, because I lead such a vegetable existence, that a call to travel would fall upon me like a thunderbolt. In the presence of this Kabuliwalla, I was immediately transported to the foot of arid mountain peaks, with narrow little defiles twisting in and out amongst their towering heights. I could see the string of camels bearing the merchandise, and the company of turbaned merchants, carrying some of their queer old firearms, and some of their spears, journeying downward towards the plains. I could see—but at some such point Mini’s mother would intervene, imploring me to ‘beware of that man.’