Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/165

GRAFTER AND MASTER GRAFTER

It is said that, compared to the cunning of the fakir, the Holy Man of Hindustan, even an Armenian, a trustee, a banker, a widow, a demon, and a female cobra during the Grishna Season, are only lisping, prattling babes.

Listen, then, to the tale of Harar Lal, the babu, the banker, the giver of many nautch parties, the sufferer from that envied disease of the idle rich, diabetes; and of Krishna Chucker-jee, the fakir, the Holy Man, the ash-smeared darling of the many gods.

Harar Lal, the babu, was the big man of the village. His earrings were of jade. His face was shiny with ghee. His wife was fat and very beautiful; none of your lean, panther-like women she, but a proper woman, with the walk of the king-goose and the waist of the she-elephant. A most proper woman indeed! Three times he had been to Bombay; and he had brought back marvelous devil-things; clocks which clucked like moor-birds, boxes which had songs and voices in their bowels, resplendent and beautiful ornaments with the magic legend "Made in Birmingham."

He was a banker. And Fate endowed him with such a miraculous skill in the making-out of accounts that a man to whom he had loaned fifty rupees might go on making monthly payments of twenty rupees each for three years without reducing his debt by a single anna. Great are the virtues of Compound Interest!