Collected Short Fiction by V. S. Naipaul

the red, salty type of butter.
    Then I couldn’t find my way back.
    I found about six Miguel Streets, but none seemed to have my house. After a long time walking up and down I began to cry. I sat down on the pavement and got my shoes wet in the gutter.
    Some little white girls were playing in a yard behind me. I looked at them, still crying. A girl wearing a pink frock came out and said, ‘Why you crying?’
    I said, ‘I lost.’
    She put her hands on my shoulder and said, ‘Don’t cry. You know where you live?’
    I pulled out a piece of paper from my shirt pocket and showed her. Then a man came up. He was wearing white shorts and a white shirt, and he looked funny.
    The man said, ‘Why he crying?’ in a gruff, but interested way.
    The girl told him.
    The man said, ‘I will take him home.’
    I asked the girl to come too.
    The man said, ‘Yes, you better come to explain to his mother.’
    The girl said, ‘All right, Mr Titus Hoyt.’
    That was one of the first things about Titus Hoyt that I found interesting. The girl calling him ‘Mr Titus Hoyt’. Not Titus, or Mr Hoyt, but Mr Titus Hoyt. I later realized that everyone who knew him called him that.
    When we got home the girl explained to my mother what had happened, and my mother was ashamed of me.
    Then the girl left.
    Mr Titus Hoyt looked at me and said, ‘He look like a intelligent little boy.’
    My mother said in a sarcastic way, ‘Like his father.’
    Titus Hoyt said, ‘Now, young man, if a herring and a half cost a penny and a half, what’s the cost of three herrings?’
    Even in the country, in Chaguanas, we had heard about that.
    Without waiting, I said, ‘Three pennies.’
    Titus Hoyt regarded me with wonder.
    He told my mother, ‘This boy bright like anything, ma’am. You must take care of him and send him to a good school and feed him good food so he could study well.’
    My mother didn’t say anything.
    When Titus Hoyt left, he said, ‘Cheerio!’
    That was the second interesting thing about him.
    My mother beat me for getting my shoes wet in the gutter but she said she wouldn’t beat me for getting lost.
    For the rest of that day I ran about the yard saying, ‘Cheerio! Cheerio!’ to a tune of my own.
    That evening Titus Hoyt came again.
    My mother didn’t seem to mind.
    To me Titus Hoyt said, ‘You can read?’
    I said yes.
    ‘And write?’
    I said yes.
    ‘Well, look,’ he said, ‘get some paper and a pencil and write what I tell you.’
    I said, ‘Paper and pencil?’
    He nodded.
    I ran to the kitchen and said, ‘Ma, you got any paper and pencil?’
    My mother said, ‘What you think I is? A shopkeeper?’
    Titus Hoyt shouted, ‘Is for me, ma’am.’
    My mother said, ‘Oh,’ in a disappointed way.
    She said, ‘In the bottom drawer of the bureau you go find my purse. It have a pencil in it.’
    And she gave me a copy-book from the kitchen shelf.
    Mr Titus Hoyt said, ‘Now, young man, write. Write the address of this house in the top right-hand corner, and below that, the date.’ Then he asked, ‘You know who we writing this letter to, boy?’
    I shook my head.
    He said, ‘Ha, boy! Ha! We writing to the
Guardian
, boy.’
    I said, ‘The
Trinidad Guardian
? The paper? What,
me
writing to the
Guardian
! But only big big man does write to the
Guardian.
’
    Titus Hoyt smiled. ‘That’s why you writing. It go surprise them.’
    I said, ‘What I go write to them about?’
    He said, ‘You go write it now. Write. To the Editor,
Trinidad Guardian
. Dear Sir, I am but a child of eight (How old you is? Well, it don’t matter anyway) and yesterday my mother sent me to make a purchase in the city. This, dear Mr Editor, was my first peregrination (p-e-r-e-g-r-i-n-a-t-i-o-n) in this metropolis, and I had the misfortune to wander from the path my mother had indicated—’
    I said, ‘Oh God, Mr Titus Hoyt, where you learn all these big words and them? You sure you spelling them right?’
    Titus Hoyt smiled. ‘I spend all