Meanwhile the desolate little couple had toiled painfully back to Paroor, and halted outside their uncle’s enclosure. They dared not venture in, and they crouched timidly without the battered wooden doorway, whilst Zālim Sing laid down the law, expounded his own virtues, and denounced Chūnnee to more than half the village. He had always been secretly jealous of his good-looking brother, who, moreover, was the father of a son, whilst his wife had borne him, instead of the much-desired heir, no fewer than seven daughters, of whom four survived; and Zālim’s enemies said among themselves that his sins must be many, or he would never have been punished with seven girls! He talked freely, knowing there was no one to defend the absent, and the starving pair heard that their father was a liar, a dacoit, a budmash, a thief, and the most ungrateful kinsman to a noble-hearted brother that ever drew the breath of life—one cannot talk for ever; and as the listeners gradually dropped off, notice was naturally attracted by the two wretched little beggars in the lane—what was to become of them?—their home was empty, save for a reaping-hook, a charpoy, and a cat.
Zālim Sing pulled his beard, and scowled; his crooked eye rolled fiercely, till a woman in the crowd exclaimed in a loud clear voice—
“Since thou sayest thou art a benevolent man, and the most generous of kinsmen, why dost thou stare at the starving ones, instead of taking them in?”
Their dusty feet and hunger-stricken faces touched the crowd—as easily swayed as the branch of a tree to this side and that, by whatever wind may blow.
There was a hoarse murmur, which the crafty Zālim quickly interpreted; now was the time to pose as a noble benefactor—or never; and he drew the two children over the threshold of the door, and shut himself in with his detested encumbrances.
He gave them some coarse food and water, and showed them a sort of shed where they might sleep. “But thou mayst not enter my house,” he said, “or play with my children; thy father is a wicked man, therefore ye are pariahs, but I and my children are good.”
The next day he went to his brother’s abode and sold the old charpoy, reaping-hook, and house for the sum of seven rupees; but he could neither sell nor kill the cat—she sat serenely aloft in a neem tree, far out of his reach. Presently she discovered her old owners, or they discovered her; they hid her secretly in their miserable shelter, and begged a little milk in the village. Alas! she was their only friend. Their cousins—four sallow, ugly children, two of whom had inherited their parent’s violent squint, and all of whom were laden with anklets and bangles, and a vast sense of their own importance—condescended to come and patronize the two wicked beggars who lived in the old goat-shed in a corner of the enclosure. They experienced an intense and novel delight in patronizing, teasing, pinching, and threatening these little pariahs, who were better fun, and afforded more scope for amusement, than any of their usual games, and their sense of their own superiority swelled to enormous proportions. They visited the unfortunates at all hours; but the cat knew their voices, and hid hastily among the thatch. Bazaar cats are wonderfully active and cunning, they are also marvellous thieves, and the cat throve.
Presently Zālim Sing’s wife discovered that Girunda was old enough to be of use. She set him to do the work of two servants, or one pony. He had to draw water and carry it home from the well, to grind corn, to cut fodder, whilst his little sister cried herself to sleep alone, for she dared not leave the cat, lest her ever-prying cousins should discover it and throw it down the well. Certainly its appearance was against it; it was lean and long and dirty-white, with a thin rat tail; and a sharp-pointed face—a pure village type—hungry, and careless of its appearance, a merciless mouser, but a faithful adherent.
Poor Girunda now toiled early and late, he received nought but blows, abuse, and the coarsest fare. Much of his utility was unknown to his uncle—who was frequently from home—but who scowled every time that his glance fell upon him.
Affairs were not going quite as smoothly as hitherto with Zālim Sing. The prices had risen in everything, save in his own particular commodity, linseed. There was the prospect of an unusually hot, scarce season, and his pony was sick. He vented all his ill humour on the two oppressed children “within his gates”—a most excellent, comprehensive, and Eastern expression—meaning within the mud or stone enclosure, where the master is supreme, where he can shut out all the world save his household, his oxen, and servants—shut it out by merely closing to the street an iron-knobbed wooden door. Within Zālim’s gates his nephew became a slave; he was made to tend the furnace in the wall, at the other side of which boiled an enormous receptacle of linseed oil. This duty was murderous in the glaring, breathless month of April; it was worse than a fireman’s work in June in the Red Sea—and the fireman is relieved at his post; no one ever relieved Girunda—the name signified “thick bread;” but of any bread his share was small—and then he fell sick. For two days he lay in his shed, burning with fever, his uncle beat him repeatedly with a thick stick for his laziness—beat him savagely too—but the boy made no moan, only his little sister screamed, and the screams attracted the neighbours.