“From his brother, probably,” said the Lady. “He’ll be all excited over it. You’ll have to do the milking.”
Her surmise as to the letter was correct, though I didn’t have to do the milking.
“Letter come China country! My brother!” Prem Singh announced exultantly, when he came for the milk pail. “Pretty good!” He ducked his head sideways in a delighted nod. “I go milk now.”
We had known of this brother ever since the Hindu had become our devoted and isolated adherent. He was Prem Singh’s family, the only relative he had in the world.
“My father, mammy, been die,” he had explained to me. “Both. My father, my mammy, two my sister, my little brother: all one time die. Too much sick. All my uncle, my auntie, everybody die. Too many people. Just me, my big brother, live. Thass all.” From which we gathered that a cholera epidemic had left the two boys orphans: Prem Singh, now our vassal, and Kala Singh, half a dozen years older, at present a British policeman at Shanghai.
It was a poor life, this brother’s, but highly treasured by the younger brother, who, curiously enough, proved to be the stable member of the family. Kala Singh had left a bad record behind him in India, including a year’s jail sentence for knifing a co-conspirator in a bank robbery.
“My brother pretty much been marry,” Prem Singh told me one time, his face clouding over. “One time twelve hundred, one time fifteen hundred, dollar—my country rupee. All go.” He snapped his fingers to illustrate the disappearance of the marriage money into thin air. “Too much drink. Too much gambler.”
Evidence that the black sheep had never mended his ways was furnished abundantly in the repeated requests that came for money, which Prem Singh never refused.
“Mester,” he would usually ask me on the day succeeding the arrival of a letter from “China country,” “you two hundred dollar today bank take off, mice.” I had never been able to teach him the use of the possessive “mine”; it was invariably mice. “I send money China country. My brother.” Once or twice I remonstrated with him about this, to no purpose. After all, it was his own money: the two dollars a day which, with practically no outgo, added up month by month in the bank. A letter from India, which he told me came from one of his brother’s deserted wives, proved equally futile, though troubling him for several days. Its only ultimate result was to prejudice his young mind still further against womankind and the institution of marriage.
“Me? Not any been marry!” he assured me, his eyes flashing. “Never! All time too much trouble! No good.”