they go by in a pageant of health and pleasure before the sick boy Amal's eyes. The Curd-seller calls up the picture of his hill village, and Amal imitates his cry:
"Curds, curds, fine curds!" from the dairy village—from the country of the Panch-mura hills by the Shamli bank. "Curds, good curds!" In the early morning the women make the cows stand in a row under the trees and milk them, and in the evening they turn the milk into curds. "Curds, good curds!" Hello, there's the watchman on his rounds. Watchman, I say, come and have a word with me.
It is the Watchman who tells him of the Post Office, in the new big house over the way, which the boy has seen with its flag flying, and the people always going in and out. "One fine day," he tells Amal, "there may be a letter for you in there"; and with the promise of the King's letter, and the promise of the flower of Sudha the little Flower-girl, who will bring him one on her return, the hope of Amal is sealed. The Curd-seller has already left a jar of curds, and promised a child-wedding with his niece. He told me, says Amal, that in the morning "she would milk with her own hands the black cow and feed me with warm milk with foam on it from a brand new earthen cruse; and in the
