"And may we venture to ask, further, what your share of the privation has been?" pursued a science student.
"You want to know, do you?" replied my master. "It is Nikhil himself who has to buy up that Indian mill yarn; he has had to start a weaving school to get it woven; and to judge by his past brilliant business exploits, by the time his cotton fabrics leave the loom their cost will be that of cloth-of-gold; so they will only find a use, perhaps, as curtains for his drawing-room, even though their flimsiness may fail to screen him. When you get tired of your vow, you will laugh the loudest at their artistic effect. And if their workmanship is ever truly appreciated at all, it will be by foreigners."
I have known my master all my life, but have never seen him so agitated. I could see that the pain had been silently accumulating in his heart for some time, because of his surpassing love for me, and that his habitual self-possession had become secretly undermined to the breaking point.
"You are our elders," said the medical student. "It is unseemly that we should bandy words with you. But tell us, pray, finally, are you determined not to oust foreign articles from your market?"
"I will not," I said, "because they are not mine."
"Because that will cause you a loss!" smiled the M.A. student.
"Because he, whose is the loss, is the best judge," retorted my master.
With a shout of __Bande Mataram__ they left us.
A FEW days later, my master brought Panchu round to me. His __zamindar__, it appeared, had fined him a hundred rupees, and was threatening him with ejectment.
"Because," I was told, "he has been found selling foreign cloths. He begged and prayed Harish Kundu, his __zamindar__, to let him sell off his stock, bought with borrowed money, promising faithfully never to do it again; but the __zamindar__ would not hear of it, and insisted on his burning the foreign stuff there and then, if he wanted to be let off. Panchu in his desperation blurted out defiantly: "I can't afford it! You are rich; why not buy it up and burn it?" This only made Harish Kundu red in the face as he shouted: "The scoundrel must be taught manners, give him a shoe-beating!" So poor Panchu got insulted as well as fined.