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Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

"Plain Tales from the Hills"

' Ditta Mull has one daughter now, but he SAYS
he will have a son, soon. And he says: 'At the end of five years,
by this new bundobust, I must go. If I do not go, I must get fresh
seals and takkus-stamps on the papers, perhaps in the middle of the
harvest, and to go to the law-courts once is wisdom, but to go twice
is Jehannum.' That is QUITE true," explained Tods, gravely. "All
my friends say so. And Ditta Mull says:--'Always fresh takkus and
paying money to vakils and chaprassis and law-courts every five
years or else the landlord makes me go. Why do I want to go? Am I
fool? If I am a fool and do not know, after forty years, good land
when I see it, let me die! But if the new bundobust says for
FIFTEEN years, then it is good and wise. My little son is a man,
and I am burnt, and he takes the ground or another ground, paying
only once for the takkus-stamps on the papers, and his little son is
born, and at the end of fifteen years is a man too. But what profit
is there in five years and fresh papers? Nothing but dikh, trouble,
dikh.


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