How did the boy convince the man to polish his shoes in the story ‘Eight Rupees’?
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Answer:
Eight Rupees
It was nine o'clock. The boy, thin and small, lumbered up the steps of the many- storied mansion. He stopped at each floor to survey the doors of all the rooms. The shirt he wore was tattered and his skin showed through it. The pockets of his dirty shorts bulged with the weight of something in them.
On one of the top floors a door, with a bigger and brighter nameplate than any other door in the mansion, caught his attention. The boy stood staring at it a long time. Finally, moving a few yards away and sitting down on the floor, he kept an eye on it.
People were coming out of the apartments and going down the stops. The boy studied each thoroughly. After about half an hour the door with the bigger and brighter nameplate opened and a tall, rather well-dressed man came out.
The boy sprang up, pulled out two tins of boot polish from one pocket and a brush from the other and intercepting the man said, "Shoe-shine, Sahib."
The man looked at his shoes and said, "I don't need one now. Not for another two days."
The boy's countenance fell. He showed that he was disappointed.
"I'll charge you half the market rate, sir."
The man smiled, "It's not a question of money."
"I'll make you shoes shine like silver." The man refused. But the boy persisted. Finally the man agreed.
"Thank you, " the boy said, his face lighting up.
"But where's your footrest?"
"I haven't got one, sahib. I'll buy one some day. When I've saved enough."
Agilely, the boy lowered himself, crossed his legs and slapping one of knees sharply, said, "Put your foot here." The knee looked tender and the man hesitated before putting his foot on it.
"What happened to your footrest? Broke it? Lost it?"
"I never had one. Can't afford one, with a mother and three sisters to support, and earnings being what they are."
He put the polish with rapid little stabs of his forefinger, then spread it all over with energetic circular strokes of his finger tips.
"Am I not an expert?" the boy asked as he worked looking up into the man's face. He had bright elongated eyes, strikingly set off by his smooth chocolate brown skin. The man looked down at the boy's fluttering hand and said, "Yes
"Wish I had a box and a footrest. So that my sisters could at least go to school."
"They don't go to school?"
"I'm the only one in the family who earns. The others are too young."
"What about your father?"