Now the days of an elephant -- let all listen to the Tataka ! -- are thirty-five years to his full strength , and through thirty-five Rains the ringed elephant befriended the younger , and all the while the fetter ate into the flesh . ` Then one day the young elephant saw the half-buried iron , and turning to the elder said : `` What is this ? '' `` It is even my sorrow , '' said he who had befriended him . Then that other put out his trunk and in the twinkling of an eyelash abolished the ring , saying : `` The appointed time has come . '' So the virtuous elephant who had waited temperately and done kind acts was relieved , at the appointed time , by the very calf whom he had turned aside to cherish -- let all listen to the Tataka ! for the Elephant was Ananda , and the Calf that broke the ring was none other than The Lord Himself ... ' Then he would shake his head benignly , and over the ever-clicking rosary point out how free that elephant-calf was from the sin of pride . He was as humble as a chela who , seeing his master sitting in the dust outside the Gates of Learning , over-leapt the gates -LRB- though they were locked -RRB- and took his master to his heart in the presence of the proud-stomached city . Rich would be the reward of such a master and such a chela when the time came for them to seek freedom together ! So did the lama speak , coming and going across India as softly as a bat . A sharp-tongued old woman in a house among the fruit-trees behind Saharunpore honoured him as the woman honoured the prophet , but his chamber was by no means upon the wall . In an apartment of the forecourt overlooked by cooing doves he would sit , while she laid aside her useless veil and chattered of spirits and fiends of Kulu , of grandchildren unborn , and of the free-tongued brat who had talked to her in the resting-place . Once , too , he strayed alone from the Grand Trunk Road below Umballa to the very village whose priest had tried to drug him ; but the kind Heaven that guards lamas sent him at twilight through the crops , absorbed and unsuspicious , to the Rissaldar 's door . Here was like to have been a grave misunderstanding , for the old soldier asked him why the Friend of the Stars had gone that way only six days before . ` That may not be , ' said the lama . ` He has gone back to his own people . ' ` He sat in that corner telling a hundred merry tales five nights ago , ' his host insisted . ` True , he vanished somewhat suddenly in the dawn after foolish talk with my granddaughter . He grows apace , but he is the same Friend of the Stars as brought me true word of the war . Have ye parted ? '
` Yes -- and no , ' the XXXXX replied .
Ananda Calf brat day days eyelash fetter forecourt lama war