The Story of Muhammad Din (Unabridged)

First published in the Civil and Military Gazette on 8 September, 1886, reprinted in the United Services College Chronicle on 18 December the same year, and collected in Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in successive later editions of this collection. Muhammad Din is a small boy, the son of the khitmatgar (butler), 'a tiny plump figure in a ridiculously inadequate shirt.' He asks if he can play with the narrator's polo ball, and from then on is his friend, greeting him solemnly, trotting about the compound, playing make-believe games, and happily constructing elaborate palaces of flowers and pebbles and sea shells. But it is a short-lived happiness, …