ashed, self-confessed
before the world,--how could one withhold belief in the face of such
supreme self-confidence? I remember how once I got the types for the
letters of my name from some printing press, and what a memorable thing
it seemed when I inked and pressed them on paper and found my name
imprinted.

We used to give a lift in our carriage to this schoolfellow and
author-friend of ours. This led to visiting terms. He was also great at
theatricals. With his help we erected a stage on our wrestling ground
with painted paper stretched over a split bamboo framework. But a
peremptory negative from upstairs prevented any play from being acted
thereon.

A comedy of errors was however played later on without any stage at all.
The author of this has already been introduced to the reader in these
pages. He was none other than my nephew Satya. Those who behold his
present calm and sedate demeanour would be shocked to learn of the
tricks of which he was the originator.

[Illustration: Satya]

The event of which I am writing happened sometime afterwards when I was
twelve or thirteen. Our magician friend had told of so many strange
properties of things that I was consumed with curiosity to see them for
myself. But the materials of which he spoke were invariably so rare
or distant that one could hardly hope to get hold of them without the
help of Sindbad the sailor. Once, as it happened, the Professor forgot
himself so far as to mention accessible things. Who could ever believe
that a seed dipped and dried twenty-one times in the juice of a species
of cactus would sprout and flower and fruit all in the space of an hour?
I was determined to test this, not daring withal to doubt the assurance
of a Professor whose name appeared in a printed book.

I got our gardener to furnish me with a plentiful supply of the milky
juice, and betook myself, on a Sunday afternoon, to our mystic nook in a
corner of the roof terrace, to experiment with the stone of a mango. I
was wrapt in my task of dipping and drying--but the grown-up reader will
probably not wait to ask me the result. In the meantime, I little knew
that Satya, in another corner, had, in the space of an hour, caused to
root and sprout a mystical plant of his own creation. This was to bear
curious fruit later on.

After the day of this experiment the Professor rather avoided me, as I
gradually came to perceive. He would not sit on the same side in the
carriage, and altogeth