CHAPTER V
'Sunni,' said Moti, as the two boys rode through the gates of the courtyard a year later, 'a man of your race has come here, and my father has permitted him to remain. My father has given him the old empty jail to live in, behind the monkey temple. They say many curious things are in his house. Let us ride past it.'
In his whole life Sunni had never heard such an interesting piece of news before—even Tooni's, about the Maharajah's horseman, was nothing to this. 'Why is he come?' he asked, putting his little red Arab into a trot.
'To bring your gods to the Rajputs.'
'I have no gods,' declared Sunni. 'Kali is so ugly—I have no heart for her. Ganesh makes me laugh, with his elephant's head; and Tooni says that Allah is not my God.'
'Tooni says,' Sunni went on reflectively, 'that my God is in her little black book. But I have never seen him.'
Perhaps this Englishman will show him to you,' suggested Moti.
'But His Highness, your father, will he allow strange gods to be brought to the people?'
'No,' said Moti, 'the people will not look at them. Every one has been warned. But the stranger is to remain, that he may teach me English. I do not wish to learn English—or anything. It is always so hot when the pundit comes. But my father wishes it.'
A pundit is a wise old man who generally has a long white beard, and thinks nothing in the world is so enjoyable as Sanskrit or Arabic. Sunni, too, found it hot when the pundit came. But an English pundit—