"That is very funny and very foolish," he said, nodding at the poster. "I am
going down to the Northbrook Club. Will you come too?"
I walked with him for some time. "You are not well," he said. "What is there
in your mind? You do not talk."
"Grish Chunder, you've been too well educated to believe in a God, haven't
vou?"
"Oah, yes, here! But when I go home I must conciliate popular superstition,
and make ceremonies of purification, and my women will anoint idols."
"And bang up tulsi and feast the purohit, and take you back into caste again
and make a good khuttri of you again, you advanced social Free-thinker. And
you'll eat desi food, and like it all, from the smell in the courtyard to the
mustard oil over you."
"I shall very much like it," said Grish Chunder, unguardedly. "Once a Hindu--
always a Hindu. But I like to know what the English think they know."
"I'll tell you something that one Englishman knows. It's an old tale to you."
I began to tell the story of Charlie in English, but Grish Chunder put a
question in the vernacular, and the history went forward naturally in the
tongue best suited for its telling. After all it could never have been told in
English. Grish Chunder heard me, nodding from time to time, and then came up
to my rooms where I finished the tale.
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