Yes, it was very beautiful, very exalting; also very disturbing to this inheritor of a nature built on simpler, more direct lines. That ancestral past of his seemed brutally bald beside this highly decorated castle of chivalry.
"Aha! Good evening, pupil Govind," broke in the accurate voice of Narayan Chand, head master of the district school. "You have, I am glad to see, availed yourself of advantages of public library. With what mental pabulum have you provided yourself this summer's eve?"
As he spoke, he seated himself likewise on the parapet of the sewer, and read over the boy's shoulder, Amor Vincit Omnia. Then his spectacled glance travelled down the page, returning for comfort to the title; that, at least, smacked of learning. "Ah, aha! I see. Light literature. Good for colloquial, and of paramount use in vivâs. So far, well. For superiority of diction, nevertheless, and valuability to grammar studies, give me Tatler, Spectator, and such classics."
Govind closed his book in most unusual irritation. "Even in English literature, master-ji, new things may be better than old."
"Of that there is no possible doubt," quoted master-ji, with cheerful gravity. He was a most diligent reader of the English papers, and used to sit at the library table for hours of an evening devouring the critiques on Gilbert's or Tennyson's last with undiscriminating absorption in the formation and style of the sentence. His quotations were in consequence more various than select. "Of that there can be no possible probable manner of doubt, as a modern poet puts it tersely," he repeated, tilting his embroidered smoking-cap farther from his forehead and drawing the black alpaca tails of his coat round his legs; "yet still, for all that, it is held, that--to speak colloquially--for taking the cake of scholarship the classics----"
Govind Sahai put his feet to the ground and the first volume under his arm.
"Master-ji, when one labours long days at cube roots, then classics in the evening become excessive. Life is not all learning; life is love also."
He was quoting from the book he had been reading.
"Sits the wind in that quarter," began Narayan sagely; then he looked at the boy reflectively and changed manner and language. "That brings to memory, my son," he said in Hindustani. "When comes thy wedding procession? I must speak to the virtuous widow that it come in vacation time, so as not to interfere with study."
A sullen indifference was on Govind's face.