In his story of the fruit-seller, in one of his prose-books, which reads very like a chapter directly out of his own experience, we have a small daughter of the writer himself, Mini, as the chief figure. Her childish desires, her mischief, and her drollery are contrasted with the tall form of the Kabuli hawker or fruit-seller who brings grapes and raisins and apricots to the door. The sack which he carries is like Fortunatus's purse, a wonder-worker; to the child's mind it is mysterious and inexhaustible; and it becomes the Kabuli's joke, when Mini asks him what there is inside it, to reply that it contains an elephant.
My house stood by the road-side. Mini ran to the window and began shouting at the top of her voice, "Kabuli, Ho! Kabuli!"
Clad in loose dirty attire, with a goodly turban on his head and sacks hanging from his shoulders, a tall Kabuli was travelling slowly along the road with some baskets of grapes in his hand.
A few days after I found my daughter sitting on the bench near the door and chattering away without pause to the Kabuli who sat at her feet, smiling and listening. I noticed that the corner of her little sari was full of almonds and raisins.
Such was the beginning of the friendship between the queerly assorted pair, a friendship
