Next
morning I came upon Muhammad Din crying softly to himself over the ruin I had
wrought.
Some one had cruelly told him that the Sahib was very angry with him for
spoiling the garden, and had scattered his rubbish using bad language the
while. Muhammad Din labored for an hour at effacing every trace of the dust-
bank and pottery fragments, and it was with a tearful apologetic face that he
said, "Talaam Tahib," when I came home from the office. A hasty inquiry
resulted in Imam Din informing Muhammad Din that by my singular favor he was
permitted to disport himself as he pleased. Whereat the child took heart and
fell to tracing the ground-plan of an edifice which was to eclipse the
marigold-polo-ball creation.
For some months, the chubby little eccentricity revolved in his humble orbit
among the castor-oil bushes and in the dust; always fashioning magnificent
palaces from stale flowers thrown away by the bearer, smooth water-worn
pebbles, bits of broken glass, and feathers pulled, I fancy, from my fowls--
always alone and always crooning to himself.
A gayly-spotted sea-shell was dropped one day close to the last of his little
buildings; and I looked that Muhammad Din should build something more than
ordinarily splendid on the strength of it.
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