"Perhaps I don't," retorted Hoshiaribi, flushing up. "My fathers were not scriveners and quill-drivers since creation, like yours. My people are poor. If I go home I must spin and grind corn. I will not. I tell you I will not! That is an end of it."
"Then you must teach."
"I don't want to teach. I want to stay here and learn."
"Be quiet, girls!" reproved the English teacher. "Do stick to your lessons, and remember why you come here. Think, just think, of the money that is being spent on your education!"
Hoshiaribi gave a triumphant glance at the Bengali girl. That was it. They had paid her to learn, and she had learned. The rest was an injustice.
II.
A loud, resounding slap, another, and another! A torrent of irrelevant abuse in a strange tongue. Then something which is the same all over the world--a fit of hysterics.
Hoshiaribi, as she stormed and sobbed and laughed, might have been any spoiled, overwrought young woman in any country.
That was an end of everything. After slaving for months, after doing without a new bodice in order to pay the ungrateful imps, after cozening and flattering their stupid, cow-like mothers, it had come to this: that Sultani, on whose performances Hoshiari relied for a fair inspection, had divided four thousand one hundred and seven by six thousand three hundred and two. She had not only tried to divide it--she had divided it--with a quotient of fifty-six, and a remainder of five thousand and three. It was too much--too much in every way; with Peru lounging all day at the Central flirting with Chundoo, Fâtma thinking of nothing but the babies, the gold edge on the dress she must wear at the wedding next week wanting renewal, and inspection-day next month.
She propped herself up against the whitewashed wall at one end of the room, Sultani, the injured prize pupil, at the other, and the two sobbed vindictively across the intervening space, while a connecting circle of alphabet-learners whimpered in sympathy with some one, which, they scarcely knew, for they were mites of babies, not six years old any of them.