‘Sir, do you want a servant?’ Sidda asked. ‘Come in,’ said Mr Sivasanker. As Sidda opened the gate and came in, Mr Sivasanker subjected him to a scrutiny and said to himself, ‘Doesn’t seem to be a bad sort . . . At any rate, the fellow looks tidy.’ ‘Where were you before?’ he asked. Sidda said, ‘In a bungalow there,’ and indicated a vague somewhere, ‘in the doctor’s house.’ ‘What is his name?’ ‘I don’t know, master,’ Sidda said. ‘He lives near the market.’ ‘Why did they send you away?’ ‘They left the town, master,’ Sidda said, giving the stock reply. Mr Sivasanker was unable to make up his mind. He called his wife. She looked at Sidda and said, ‘He doesn’t seem to me worse than the others we have had.’ Leela, their five-year-old daughter, came out, looked at Sidda and gave a cry of joy. ‘Oh, Father!’ she said, ‘I like him. Don’t send him away. Let us keep him in our house.’ And that decided it. Sidda was given two meals a day and four rupees a month, in return for which he washed clothes, tended the garden, ran errands, chopped wood and looked after Leela.
