“He is a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing pig!” explained the uncle to an eager inquirer; “he will not work aught save his teeth. And she is half-witted.”
“True,” said the listener; “and it is only a charitable man like thyself, O Zālim Sing, who would keep the beggar’s brats, and with a dearth in the land, too; and wheat rising every week.”
Then she went back to her spinning of coarse country cloth; Girunda lay and buried his head in his hands, and Gyannia sobbed in a corner; but his tormentor went into the house, to confer with his wife.
“If the boy would not work, neither should he eat. Was he himself to mind the furnace?” he demanded angrily.
“The boy is sickening,” said the woman. “I have seen it coming—it is something bad—maybe the cholera, maybe the smallpox. It is surely some heavy sickness.”
“And he may die?”
“Yea, having given it to us and ours. What shall we do?”
“Behold, to-night, when the village is quiet, I will take the two of them, and set them on the high-road. Thou canst bake some chupattis, and I will give them four annas, and tell them to begone, to return here no more, for if they do, of a surety I will kill them.”
“They will believe thee!” said his wife with a laugh.
“Yea. Why should they not beg, as others do? And soon the boy can work, and earn an anna a day.”