"I am going down to the Northbrook Club. Will you come
too?"
I walked with him for some time. "You are not well," he said.
"What is there in your mind? You do not talk."
"Grish Chunder, you've been too well educated to believe in a God,
haven't you?"
"Oah, yes, _here_! But when I go home I must conciliate popular
superstition, and make ceremonies of purification, and my women
will anoint idols."
"And bang up _tulsi_ and feast the _purohit_, and take you back into
caste again and make a good _khuttrj_ of you again, you advanced
social Free-thinker. And you'll eat _desi_ food, and like it all, from
the smell in the courtyard to the mustard oil over you."
"I shall very much like it," said Grish Chunder, unguardedly.
"Once a Hindu--always a Hindu. But I like to know what the
English think they know."
"I'll tell you something that one Englishman knows. It's an old tale
to you."
I began to tell the story of Charlie in English, but Grish Chunder
put a question in the vernacular, and the history went forward
naturally in the tongue best suited for its telling.
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