er seemed to fight shy of me.

One day, all of a sudden, he proposed that each one in turn should jump
off the bench in our schoolroom. He wanted to observe the differences
in style, he said. Such scientific curiosity did not appear queer in a
professor of magic. Everyone jumped, so did I. He shook his head with a
subdued "h'm." No amount of persuasion could draw anything further out
of him.

Another day he informed us that some good friends of his wanted to make
our acquaintance and asked us to accompany him to their house. Our
guardians had no objection, so off we went. The crowd in the room seemed
full of curiosity. They expressed their eagerness to hear me sing. I
sang a song or two. Mere child as I was I could hardly have bellowed
like a bull. "Quite a sweet voice," they all agreed.

When refreshments were put before us they sat round and watched us eat.
I was bashful by nature and not used to strange company; moreover the
habit I acquired during the attendance of our servant Iswar left me a
poor eater for good. They all seemed impressed with the delicacy of my
appetite.

In the fifth act I got some curiously warm letters from our Professor
which revealed the whole situation. And here let the curtain fall.

I subsequently learnt from Satya that while I had been practising magic
on the mango seed, he had successfully convinced the Professor that I
was dressed as a boy by our guardians merely for getting me a better
schooling, but that really this was only a disguise. To those who are
curious in regard to imaginary science I should explain that a girl is
supposed to jump with her left foot forward, and this is what I had done
on the occasion of the Professor's trial. I little realised at the time
what a tremendously false step mine had been!

(13) _My Father_

Shortly after my birth my father took to constantly travelling about. So
it is no exaggeration to say that in my early childhood I hardly knew
him. He would now and then come back home all of a sudden, and with him
came foreign servants with whom I felt extremely eager to make friends.
Once there came in this way a young Panjabi servant named Lenu. The
cordiality of the reception he got from us would have been worthy of
Ranjit Singh himself. Not only was he a foreigner, but a Panjabi to
boot,--what wonder he stole our hearts away?

We had the same reverence for the whole Panjabi nation as for Bhima and
Arjuna of the Mahabharata. They were warri