you in such a brown study about? Are you in want of money? Here, take this! But you must go to my father, and tell him that I have learned every thing." The Brahman accordingly went to the boy's father and said to him: "Sir, your Matilall is no common boy! he has a most extraordinary memory; he will remember for ever what he may have heard only once." There was an astrologer at the time with Baburam, who observed to the Babu: "There is no necessity for you to give me an introduction to Matilall: he is a boy whose birth was at an auspicious moment; if only he lives he is bound to become a very great man."
Baburam Babu next set about searching for a Munshi to teach his son Persian. After a long search, the grandfather of Aladi the tailor, Habibala Hoshan by name, was appointed to the post on a salary of one rupee eight annas a month, together with oil and firewood. The Munshi Saheb was a man with toothless gums, a grey beard, and a moustache like tow: his eyes would get inflamed whenever he was teaching, and when he bade his pupils repeat the letters after him, his face became hideously distorted in pronouncing the guttural Persian letters kaph, gaph, ain, ghain. The benefit that Matilall derived from learning Persian was pretty much what might have been expected from his possessing no taste whatever for the pursuit of knowledge, and having such a preceptor. As the Munshi Saheb was one day stooping over his book, repeating the maxims of Masnavi in a sing-song manner and keeping time with his hand, Matilall seized the opportunity to drop a lighted match from behind onto his beard. The poor Munshi's beard at once flared up, crackling as it blazed, upon which Matilall remarked: "How now, O Mussulman? you will not teach me any more after this, I expect." The Munshi Saheb left speedily, shaking his head and exclaiming "Tauba! Tauba!" Then as the
