When twilight fell we would not
have candles, but waited for the moon, and continued our talk in
the dusk that makes one remember.
Young Adam was not interested in our past except where it had
touched his future. I think his mother held his hand beneath the
table. Imam Din--shoeless, out of respect to the floors--brought
him his medicine, poured it drop by drop, and asked for orders.
"Wait to take him to his cot when he grows weary," said his
mother, and Imam Din retired into the shadow by the ancestral
portraits.
"Now what d'you expect to get out of your country?" the Infant
asked, when--our India laid aside we talked Adam's Africa. It
roused him at once.
"Rubber -nuts -gums -and so on," he said. "But our real future is
cotton. I grew fifty acres of it last year in my District."
"My District!" said his father. "Hear him, Mummy!"
"I did though! I wish I could show you the sample. Some
Manchester chaps said it was as good as any Sea Island cotton on
the market."
"But what made you a cotton-planter, my son?" she asked.
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