I cannot tell what were my daughter's feelings at the sight of this man,
but she began to call him loudly. "Ah!" I thought, "he will come in,
and my seventeenth chapter will never be finished!" At which exact
moment the Cabuliwallah turned, and looked up at the child. When she
saw this, overcome by terror, she fled to her mother's protection, and
disappeared. She had a blind belief that inside the bag, which the big
man carried, there were perhaps two or three other children like
herself. The pedlar meanwhile entered my doorway, and greeted me with a
smiling face.
So precarious was the position of my hero and my heroine, that my first
impulse was to stop and buy something, since the man had been called. I
made some small purchases, and a conversation began about Abdurrahman,
the Russians, she English, and the Frontier Policy.
As he was about to leave, he asked: "And where is the little girl, sir?"
And I, thinking that Mini must get rid of her false fear, had her
brought out.
She stood by my chair, and looked at the Cabuliwallah and his bag.
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