Kareem ran along at a sling trot, hustling and thrusting his slim body through the densely-packed thoroughfares; at last he arrived at home and panted out his marvellous tidings to old Ibrahim. That patriarch received the intelligence with so many exclamations of “Oh, ye fathers!” and so much clawing of his beard, that Kareem felt assured that he had been handsomely launched in life, and was indeed a man of considerable importance; he lost no time, that same evening, in hurrying to the bridge (a kind of local Rialto) and there expounding his success to a curious and envious crowd of listening friends. Among the crowd was Pera, Ibrahim’s grand-niece, Kareem’s former playmate—and present idol. She was four years younger than him by months and days, but thirty years his senior in experience, in worldly wisdom, and in wickedness. Undoubtedly she was extremely pretty, with wondrously-traced arched brows, red lips, and eloquent black eyes. Nevertheless her grand-uncle detested her, and most of her own sex bore her unconcealed animosity; they declared, “She was as false as the devil, deep as the pit, and as dangerous as a snake with a head at both ends.” People hinted that Abdool, her father, was in debt to his uncle Ibrahim; and also that Pera was promised in marriage to Mindoo, her cousin, a handsome hawk-eyed man, with a scar on his cheek and minus one finger. There was some mystery about Mindoo. Once, he had been absent for three whole years, and it was an unexplained absence; for it was mere foolishness for his brothers to say that he had joined a horse-dealer and had gone down to Allahabad. Does it take three years to sell a dozen ponies?
Mindoo was a stalwart, taciturn man, and somewhat feared; therefore no one called him a budmash to his face, or even in the ears of his kindred. He worked with a carpenter who mended ekkas and gharries, and was clever with the chisel and the saw. Nevertheless, people whispered that he had never learnt this trade at Hassanpur in his youth—but in Allahabad jail khana.
Pera was among Kareem’s audience, and listened, with unaffected interest, to the particulars of his rise in life. He had been her slave ever since she could speak, and now most of his scanty earnings went to gratify her taste for cocoanut-sweets and coloured glass bangles. “You will not scorn me now, Pera,” he pleaded, as they loitered together near the tamarind tree. “Behold, I am in the collector sahib’s service. I am to have seven rupees and clothes. I have as much wages as Mindoo!” But Pera only peeped coquettishly round the corner of her orange saree, laughed saucily, and ran away.
Kareem was soon installed in his new post, and wearing a smart blue suit and gorgeous red turban, felt the sense of personal importance accruing from new garments, when he encountered his old friends. His duties proved to be trifling in comparison to his drudgery in the serai, though, now and then, he had enjoyed the fierce, mad delight of mounting some unbroken colt, and galloping it bare-backed over the bridge, away along the Lucknow road, between the waving elephant grass, past little brown houses with pumpkins on the roof, past pools half filled with hideous blue buffaloes, scattering children, pariah dogs, and goats, as if he was mounted on a whirlwind, and riding on the storm.
Here, he had merely to groom and feed an irritable little chestnut pony, no bigger than a calf; to lead out the “lal Tattoo,” as Harry Sahib called it, with its master on its back, of a morning over the dewy maidans and along the shady roads. He ran with it as it cantered, and even galloped, though once or twice he was suddenly obliged to stop, and lean against a tree, his face grey and drawn, and groan aloud with agony (he had, though he knew it not, advanced disease of the heart); he would earnestly beseech Harry Sahib not to tell the collector, and, as a bribe, would hold Harry Sahib in the saddle, whilst he piloted him over tiny nullahs, to that young gentleman’s huge delight. The little boy spoke Hindustani as his native tongue, and soon he and his syce became sworn and intimate friends. Harry Sahib had no mother, only a lazy, elderly European nurse, who liked her beer, her slumbers, and her ease, and was secretly thankful to Kareem for taking the brat off her hands. Otherwise, Harry Sahib might not have spent so many happy hours about the stables, whilst his unsuspecting papa was absent at Cutcherry. One day, whilst he was romping with his playmate, and rolling over and over with him in piles of “bedding straw,” he suddenly snatched at a cord round his neck, and a copper amulet came off in his hand. They fought for it for fully five minutes. Harry held it tight in his little fist, and screamed and kicked and even bit, but refused to release it; in the struggle the amulet was broken, and a small piece of parchment fell out, which Kareem instantly pounced on. It was about two inches long by one wide, and was covered on both sides with closely-written quaint characters. Kareem, with much abuse and slippering, had learned to read the Koran and part of the Gulistan of Sadi, but never such letters as these!
“What is it?” inquired Harry Sahib, impatiently.
“I cannot say, Hazoor. I never knew it opened.”
“Oh, I’ll get it mended, the brass thing; but can you read the chit inside?”
“No, not this writing.”
“Let me show it to father; he can read anything!”