The Story of Sonny Sahib | Page 7

mouth as it crossed
Rajputana--and Abdul told his wife one evening, after she had put
Sonny Sahib to sleep with a hymn to Israfil, that a million of English
soldiers had come upon Cawnpore, and in their hundredfold revenge
had left neither Mussulman nor Hindoo alive in the city--also that the
Great Lord Sahib had ordered the head of every kala admi, every black
man, to be taken to build a bridge across the Ganges with, so that
hereafter his people might leave Cawnpore by another way. Then
Abdul also became of the opinion that there need be no haste in going.
Sonny Sahib grew out of the arms and necks of his long embroidered
night dresses and day dresses almost immediately, and then there was a
difficulty, which Tooni surmounted by cutting the waists off entirely
and gathering the skirts round the baby's neck with a drawing string,
making holes in the sides for his arms to come through. Tooni bought
him herself a little blue and gold Mussulman cap in the bazar. The

captain-sahib would be angry, but then the captain-sahib was very far
away, killed perhaps, and Tooni thought the blue and gold cap
wonderfully becoming to Sonny Sahib. All day long he played and
crept in this under the sacred peepul-tree in the middle of the village
among brown-skinned babies who wore no clothes at all--only a string
of beads round their fat little waists--and who sometimes sat down in
silence and made a solemn effort to comprehend him.
In quite a short time--in Rubbulgurh, where there is no winter, two
years is a very little while--Sonny Sahib grew too big for even this
adaptation of his garments; and then Tooni took him to Sheik Uddin,
the village tailor, and gave Sheik Uddin long and careful directions
about making clothes for him. The old man listened to her for an hour,
and waggled his beard, and said that he quite understood; it should be
as she wished. But Sheik Uddin had never seen any English people, and
did not understand at all. He accepted Tooni's theories, but he measured
and cut according to his own. Sheik Uddin could not afford to suffer in
his reputation for the foolish notions of a woman. So he made Sonny
Sahib a pair of narrow striped calico trousers, and a long tight-fitting
little coat with large bunches of pink roses on it, in what was the
perfectly correct fashion for Mahomedan little boys of Rubbulgurh and
Rajputana generally. Tooni paid Sheik Uddin tenpence, and admired
her purchase very much. She dressed Sonny Sahib in it doubtfully,
however, with misgivings as to what his father would say. Certainly it
was good cloth, of a pretty colour, and well made, but even to Tooni,
Sonny Sahib looked queer. Abdul had no opinion, except about the
price. He grumbled at that, but then he had grumbled steadily for two
years, yet whenever Tooni proposed that they should go and find the
captain-sahib, had said no, it was far, and he was an old man. Tooni
should go when he was dead.
Besides, Abdul liked to hear the little fellow call him 'Bap,' which
meant 'Father,' and to feel his old brown finger clasped by small pink
and white ones, as he and Sonny Sahib toddled into the bazar together.
He liked to hear Sonny Sahib's laugh, too; it was quite a different laugh
from any other boy's in Rubbulgurh, and it came oftener. He was a
merry little fellow, blue-eyed, with very yellow wavy hair, exactly,
Tooni often thought, like his mother's.

CHAPTER III

It was a grief to Tooni, who could not understand it; but Sonny Sahib
perversely refused to talk in his own tongue. She did all she could to
help him. When he was a year old she cut an almond in two, and gave
half to Sonny Sahib and half to the green parrot that swung all day in a
cage in the door of the hut and had a fine gift of conversation; if
anything would make the baby talk properly that would. Later on she
taught him all the English words she remembered herself, which were
three, 'bruss' and 'wass' and 'isstockin',' her limited but very useful
vocabulary as lady's- maid. He learned them very well, but he
continued to know only three, and he did not use them very often,
which Tooni found strange. Tooni thought the baba should have
inherited his mother's language with his blue eyes and his white skin.
Meanwhile, Sonny Sahib, playing every morning and evening under
the peepul-tree, learned to talk in the tongue of the little brown boys
who played there too.
When Sonny Sahib was four he could drive the big black hairy
buffaloes home from the village outskirts to