id Khan and Sheik
Luteef both thought it brought them luck to sell to him. But
afterwards Sonny Sahib invariably divided his purchase with whoever
happened to be his bosom friend at the time--the daughter of Ram
Dass, the blacksmith, or the son of Chundaputty, the beater of
brass--in which he differed altogether from the other boys, and
which made it fair perhaps.

At six Sonny Sahib began to find the other boys unsatisfactory in a
number of ways. He was tired of making patterns in the dust with
marigolds for one thing. He wanted to pretend. It was his
birthright to pretend, in a large active way, and he couldn't carry
it out. The other boys didn't care about making believe soldiers,
and running and hiding and shouting and beating Sonny Sahib's tom-tom,
which made a splendid drum. They liked beating the tom-tom,
but they always wanted to sit round in a ring and listen to it,
which Sonny Sahib thought very poor kind of fun indeed. They
wouldn't even pretend to be elephants, or horses, or buffaloes.
Sonny Sahib had to represent them all himself; and it is no wonder
that with a whole menagerie, as it were, upon his shoulders, he
grew a little tired sometimes. Also he was the only boy in
Rubbulgurh who cared to climb a tree that had no fruit on it, or
would venture beyond the lower branches even for mangoes or
tamarinds. And one day when he found a weaver-bird's nest in a
bush with three white eggs in it, a splendid nest, stock-full of
the fireflies that light the little hen at night, he showed it
privately first to Hurry Ghose, and then to Sumpsi Din, and lastly
to Budhoo, the sweeper's son; and not one of them could he coax to
carry off a single egg in company with him. Sonny Sahib recognised
the force of public opinion, and left the weaver-bird to her
house-keeping in peace, but he felt privately injured by it.

Certainly the other boys could tell wonderful stories--stories of
princesses and fairies and demons--Sumpsi Din's were the best--that
made Sonny Sahib's blue eyes widen in the dark, when they all sat
together on a charpoy by the door of the hut, and the stars
glimmered through the tamarind-trees. A charpoy is a bed, and
everybody in Rubbulgurh puts one outside, for sociability, in the
evening. Not much of a bed, only four short rickety legs held
together with knotted string, but it answers very well.

Sonny Sahib didn't seem to know any stories--he could only tell the
old one about the fighting A