Page:Shantiniketan; the Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.djvu/63

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SHANTINIKETAN
43

I remember so well his keen interest in Nature Study, and how he would come running and panting to my class with his latest addition to the collections of different kinds of leaves which the smaller boys were making. His words tumbling over each other in his eagerness to show me what treasures he had found, he would ask me whether any other boy had got so many different kinds. All his teachers found in him the same eager interest in his work, and at meetings of the smaller boys he would sometimes tell a story in English which was wonderfully good for so young a pupil.

When he was first taken ill it was not realised that it was anything serious, but after a week or so he became worse and it was decided to remove him to Calcutta, as the accommodation in our small Hospital building was not satisfactory for cases of serious illness. Many of the older boys had been taking their turns in sitting up at night with the little patient, and when the morning came for him to be removed eight or ten of them took up the stretcher on which he was to be carried to the station and started off along the road. As soon as Jadav realised that he was being taken away to Calcutta his whole body became restless, and instead of lying still