you must not pay me for them. Just as you have a daughter, so have I one at home; and it is in remembrance of her little face that I bring some fruit for your child. I do not come to sell it. . . ."
Saying this he thrust his hand into the folds of his loose ample cloak and brought out a piece of dirty paper from somewhere near his breast. With great care he opened the folds and spread it out upon my table.
I saw an imprint of a tiny palm upon the paper, a simple mark got by smearing the hand in lampblack. With this strange token of the child placed in his bosom Rahamat had come to sell fruit in Calcutta streets, as if the touch of the child's hand soothed the heart that was torn by the pangs of separation.
The "Babe's Pageant," one of the earlier poems of the Crescent Moon, again calls up the story of Govinda. His mother teaches Govin to walk to the sound of the doggerel verse:
Chali, chali, pá, pá!
(Walk, walk, step by step.)
Presently the child walks or wriggles until he falls into the tank in the yard of the house, and is saved by good luck. At a later stage he is saved from the wrath of the Five-faced Pancho or Pancharana, one of the gods, another form of "the all-destroying Siva." Govin in fact had offended him, and a fit was the consequence. Happily Alanza, the boy's grandmother, knows
