and the rice pot often empty, the halving of her daily wage means
self-denial to all the family. So it is that Arul, instead of herding
cattle all day, runs swiftly back to the one-roomed schoolhouse under
the cocoanuts and arrives not more than half an hour late.

The schoolroom is so primitive that you would hardly recognize it as
such. Light and air and space are all too little. There are no desks or
even benches. A small, wooden blackboard and the teacher's table and
rickety chair are all that it can boast in the way of equipment. The
only interesting thing in sight is the children themselves, rows of them
on the floor, writing letters in the sand. Unwashed they are, uncombed
and almost unclothed, but with all the witchery of childhood in their
eyes. In that bare room lies the possibility of transforming the life of
the Village of the Seven Palms.

But the teacher is innocent of the ways of modern pedagogy, and deep and
complicated are the snares of the Tamil alphabet with its two hundred
and sixteen elusive characters. Baffling, too, are the mysteries of
number combination. "If six mangoes cost three annas, how much will one
mango cost?" Arul never had an anna of her own, how should she know? The
teachers bamboo falls on her hard, little hand, and two hot tears run
down and drop on the cracked slate. The way to learning is long and
beset with as many thorns as the crooked path through the prickly pear
cactus. Bible stories are happier. Arul can tell you how the Shepherds
sang and all about the little boy who gave his own rice cakes and dried
fish, to help Jesus feed hungry people. She has been hungry so often
that that story seems real.

The years pass over Arul's head, leaving her a little taller, a little
fleeter of foot as she hurries back from the pasture, a little wiser in