Dicky was still unshaven, and there were some notes he wished to put down.
“I’ll be ready to go out with you in an hour or less,” he said. “Would you not like to go down and get a line on what is going on?”
The student confessed that he would, but plainly the American idiom “get a line on” fascinated him. He paused to inquire, and Dicky explained.
“That is very good,” the student observed. “We are taught that the language of the future is to be made of most flexible symbols. I will get a line upon what is in the air and return.”
He was back within a half hour saying that the worst had happened. Doctors Kitchlew and Satyapal had been arrested under the Defense of India Act, ordered to write farewell letters to their families, and been driven out of town, their destination unknown.
“My people are gathering to go to the bungalow of the Deputy Commissioner with a faryad (petition) that will remonstrate very firmly,” the Hindu boy said.
“We had better be there, don’t you think, when the doings begin?” Dicky inquired.
“Doings?”
“When the performance is pulled off.”
“Ah, tamasha!”