BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

Baa Baa Black Sheep,

Have you any wool?

Yes, Sir, yes, Sir, three bags full.

One for the Master, one for the Dame

None for the Little Boy that cries down the lane.

THE FIRST BAG

Nursery Rhyme.

When I was in my father's house, I was in a better place.

THEY were putting Punch to bed - the ayah and the hamal and Meeta, the big Surti boy, with the red and gold turban. Judy, already tucked inside her mosquitocurtains, was nearly asleep. Punch had been allowed. to stay up for dinner. Many privileges had been accorded to Punch within the last ten days, and a greater kindness from the people of his world had encompassed his ways and works, which were mostly obstreperous. He sat on the edge of his bed and swung his bare legs defiantly.

'Punch-baba going to bye-lo?' said the ayah suggestively.

'No,' said Punch.

Punch-baba wants the story

about the Ranee that was turned into a tiger. Meeta must tell it, and the hamal shall hide behind the door and make tiger-noises at the proper time.'

'But Judy-baba will wake up,' said the ayah.

'Judy-baba is waked,' piped a small voice from the

mosquito-curtains. There was a Ranee that lived at Delhi. Go on, Meeta,' and she fell fast asleep again while Meeta began the story.

Never had Punch secured the telling of that tale with so little opposition. He reflected for a long time. The hamal made the tiger-noises in twenty different keys.

"Top!' said Punch authoritatively.

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Why doesn't Papa come in and say he is going to give me put-put?' 'Punch-baba is going away,' said the ayah. In another week there will be no Punch-baba to pull my hair any more.' She sighed softly, for the boy of the household was very dear to her heart.

'Up the Ghauts in a train?' said Punch, standing on his bed. All the way to Nassick where the RaneeTiger lives?'

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'Not to Nassick this year, little Sahib,' said Meeta, lifting him on his shoulder. Down to the sea where the cocoanuts are thrown, and across the sea in a big ship. Will you take Meeta with you to Belait?'

'You shall all come,' said Punch, from the height of Meeta's strong arms. 'Meeta and the ayah and the hamal and Bhini-in-the-Garden, and the salaam-Captain-Sahib-snake-man."

There was no mockery in Meeta's voice when he replied Great is the Sahib's favour,' and laid the little man down in the bed, while the ayah, sitting in the moonlight at the doorway, lulled him to sleep with an interminable canticle such as they sing in the Roman Catholic Church at Parel. Punch curled himself into a ball and slept.

Next morning Judy shouted that there was a rat in the nursery, and thus he forgot to tell her the wonder

derful news. It did not much matter, for Judy was only three and she would not have understood. But Punch was five; and he knew that going to England would be much nicer than a trip to Nassick.

Papa and Mamma sold the brougham and the piano, and stripped the house, and curtailed the allowance of crockery for the daily meals, and took long council together over a bundle of letters bearing the Rocklington postmark.

'The worst of it is that one can't be certain of anything,' said Papa, pulling his moustache. The letters in themselves are excellent, and the terms are moderate enough.'

The worst of it is that the children will grow up away from me,' thought Mamma: but she did not say it aloud.

We are only one case among hundreds,' said Papa bitterly. 'You shall go Home again in five years,

dear.'

·

Punch will be ten then-and Judy eight. Oh, how long and long and long the time will be! And we have to leave them among strangers.'

'Punch is a cheery little chap. He's sure to make friends wherever he goes.'

• And who could help loving my Ju?'

They were standing over the cots in the nursery late at night, and I think that Mamma was crying softly. After Papa had gone away, she knelt down by the side of Judy's cot. The ayah saw her and put up a prayer that the memsahib might never find the love of her children taken away from her and given to a stranger.

Mamma's own prayer was a slightly illogical one.

Summarised it ran: Let strangers love my children and be as good to them as I should be, but let me preserve their love and their confidence for ever and ever. Amen.' Punch scratched himself in his sleep, and Judy moaned a little.

Next day, they all went down to the sea, and there was a scene at the Apollo Bunder when Punch discovered that Meeta could not come too, and Judy learned that the ayah must be left behind. But Punch found a thousand fascinating things in the rope, block, and steam-pipe line on the big P. and O. Steamer long before Meeta and the ayah had dried their tears.

'Come back, Punch-baba,' said the ayah.

'Come back,' said Meeta, and be a Burra-Sahib ' (a big man).

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'Yes,' said Punch, lifted up in his father's arms to wave good-bye. Yes, I will come back, and I will be a Burra Sahib Bahadur!' (a very big man indeed).

At the end of the first day Punch demanded to be set down in England, which he was certain must be close at hand. Next day there was a merry breeze, and Punch was very sick. "When I come back to Bombay,' said Punch on his recovery, 'I will come by the road-in a broom gharri. This is a very naughty ship.'

The Swedish boatswain consoled him, and he modified

his opinions as the voyage went on. There was so much to see and to handle and ask questions about that Punch nearly forgot the ayah and Meeta and the hamal, and with difficulty remembered a few words of the Hindustani, once his second-speech.

But Judy was much worse. The day before the steamer reached Southampton, Mamma asked her if she

would not like to see the ayah again. Judy's blue eyes turned to the stretch of sea that had swallowed all her tiny past, and said: 'Ayah! What ayah?'

Mamma cried over her and Punch marvelled. It was then that he heard for the first time Mamma's passionate appeal to him never to let Judy forget Mamma. Seeing that Judy was young, ridiculously young, and that Mamma, every evening for four weeks past, had come into the cabin to sing her and Punch to sleep with a mysterious rune that he called 'Sonny, my soul,' Punch could not understand what Mamma meant. But he strove to do his duty; for, the moment Mamma left the cabin, he said to Judy: Ju, you bemember Mamma?' "Torse I do,' said Judy.

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'Then always bemember Mamma, 'r else I won't give you the paper ducks that the red-haired Captain Sahib cut out for me.'

So Judy promised always to 'bemember Mamma.’

Many and many a time was Mamma's command laid upon Punch, and Papa would say the same thing with an insistence that awed the child.

You must make haste and learn to write, Punch,' said Papa, and then you'll be able to write letters to us in Bombay.'

'I'll come into your room,' said Punch, and Papa choked.

Papa and Mamma were always choking in those days. If Punch took Judy to task for not bemembering,' they choked. If Punch sprawled on the sofa in the Southampton lodging-house and sketched his future in purple and gold, they choked; and so they did if Judy put her mouth for a kiss.

Through many days all four were vagabonds on the