No More Learning

We are not young men who take these
lands, but old ones--not jais, but tradesmen with a little money--and
for fifteen years we shall have peace. Nor are we children that the
Sirkar should treat us so. "

Here Tods stopped short, for the whole table were listening. The Legal
Member said to Tods: "Is that all? "

"All I can remember," said Tods. "But you should see Ditta Mull's big
monkey. It's just like a Councillor Sahib. "

"Tods! Go to bed," said his father.

Tods gathered up his dressing-gown tail and departed.

The Legal Member brought his hand down on the table with a crash--"By
Jove! " said the Legal Member, "I believe the boy is right. The short
tenure IS the weak point. "

He left early, thinking over what Tods had said. Now, it was obviously
impossible for the Legal Member to play with a bunnia's monkey, by way
of getting understanding; but he did better.
He made inquiries,
always bearing in mind the fact that the real native--not the hybrid,
University-trained mule--is as timid as a colt, and, little by little,
he coaxed some of the men whom the measure concerned most intimately to
give in their views, which squared very closely with Tods' evidence.

So the Bill was amended in that clause; and the Legal Member was filled
with an uneasy suspicion that Native Members represent very little
except the Orders they carry on their bosoms. But he put the thought
from him as illiberal. He was a most Liberal Man.

After a time the news spread through the bazars that Tods had got the
Bill recast in the tenure clause, and if Tods' Mamma had not interfered,
Tods would have made himself sick on the baskets of fruit and pistachio
nuts and Cabuli grapes and almonds that crowded the verandah. Till he
went Home, Tods ranked some few degrees before the Viceroy in popular
estimation. But for the little life of him Tods could not understand
why.

In the Legal Member's private-paper-box still lies the rough draft of
the Sub-Montane Tracts Ryotwari Revised Enactment; and, opposite the
twenty-second clause, pencilled in blue chalk, and signed by the Legal
Member, are the words "Tods' Amendment. "




IN THE PRIDE OF HIS YOUTH.

"Stopped in the straight when the race was his own!
Look at him cutting it--cur to the bone! "
"Ask ere the youngster be rated and chidden,
What did he carry and how was he ridden?
Maybe they used him too much at the start;
Maybe Fate's weight-cloths are breaking his heart. "
--Life's Handicap.

When I was telling you of the joke that The Worm played off on the
Senior Subaltern, I promised a somewhat similar tale, but with all the
jest left out. This is that tale:

Dicky Hatt was kidnapped in his early, early youth--neither by
landlady's daughter, housemaid, barmaid, nor cook, but by a girl so
nearly of his own caste that only a woman could have said she was just
the least little bit in the world below it.