"HERE KARIM SAT ALL DAY."
"Why should he?" replied Dada. "Can't you see the hole plainly enough?"
"But suppose it was dark?"
"At night honest men are in bed, and robbers know the roads. But if God wills that a man shall fall in, why, he will fall in, and cannot help himself. It is Fate."
The stream ran down the valley past an orchard of apricot and cherry trees. By its side were willow trees, with short, thick trunks, and a row of poplars, that seemed to Karim the tallest trees he could think of. Then it ran into the village pond. Twice a week all the water was let out of this pond, to be used in watering the fields, but it soon filled up again.
When Karim was seven years old Dada began to send him here with his cousin, Ali, to wash the two big black Indian buffalos which he and Mashaddi used for plowing. It was hard to say who enjoyed it the most, the buffalos, who dearly loved the water, or the boys, who rode upon their broad backs, and splashed and swam about during the warm summer evenings as long as they pleased.
Dada soon gave Karim other work as well. He took him to the field and lifted him up upon the yoke between the buffalos. Here Karim sat all day, to keep the yoke by his weight from pressing against the throats of the buffalos as they slowly drew the plow back and forth across the field.
Next Dada sent him to watch the cows as they grazed in the open meadow in the lowland, or among the dried grasses on the hillside. Here he spent whole days with the other boys, going swimming and playing "marbles." For marbles they used the bones from the joints of sheep's legs.
The next year, in early summer, Dada told him to keep the birds away from the cherries and apricots in the little orchard, by shouting and clapping two boards together. At first this was great fun, but he became very tired of it in a few days, and his voice grew hoarse and rough. Then came harvest time, and he went out to the hot field and carried water to the reapers, and rode upon the straw cutter or swept up the grain upon the smooth threshing floor until he was so tired that he could hardly stand.