But she would not show it, and with ready tact
replied: "Are you going there?"
Amongst men of the Cabuliwallah's class, however, it is well known that
the words father-in-law's house have a double meaning. It is a
euphemism for jail, the place where we are well cared for, at no expense
to ourselves. In this sense would the sturdy pedlar take my
daughter's question. "Ah," he would say, shaking his fist at an
invisible policeman, "I will thrash my father-in-law!" Hearing this,
and picturing the poor discomfited relative, Mini would go off into
peals of laughter, in which her formidable friend would join.
These were autumn mornings, the very time of year when kings of old went
forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in
Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very
name of another country, my heart would go out to it, and at the sight
of a foreigner in the streets, I would fall to weaving a network of
dreams, --the mountains, the glens, and the forests of his distant home,
with his cottage in its setting, and the free and independent life of
far-away wilds.
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