Kim

Kim stamped with vexation when the lad made his boast good.

'If it were men--or horses,' he said, 'I could do better. This playing

with tweezers and knives and scissors is too little.'

'Learn first--teach later,' said Lurgan Sahib. 'Is he thy master?'

'Truly. But how is it done?'

'By doing it many times over till it is done perfectly--for it is worth

doing.'

The Hindu boy, in highest feather, actually patted Kim on the back.

'Do not despair,' he said. 'I myself will teach thee.'

'And I will see that thou art well taught,' said Lurgan Sahib, still

speaking in the vernacular, 'for except my boy here--it was foolish of

him to buy so much white arsenic when, if he had asked, I could have

given it--except my boy here I have not in a long time met with one

better worth teaching. And there are ten days more ere thou canst

return to Lucknao where they teach nothing--at the long price. We

shall, I think, be friends.'

They were a most mad ten days, but Kim enjoyed himself too much to

reflect on their craziness. In the morning they played the Jewel

Game--sometimes with veritable stones, sometimes with piles of swords

and daggers, sometimes with photo-graphs of natives. Through the

afternoons he and the Hindu boy would mount guard in the shop, sitting

dumb behind a carpet-bale or a screen and watching Mr Lurgan's many and

very curious visitors. There were small Rajahs, escorts coughing in

the veranda, who came to buy curiosities--such as phonographs and

mechanical toys. There were ladies in search of necklaces, and men, it

seemed to Kim--but his mind may have been vitiated by early

training--in search of the ladies; natives from independent and

feudatory Courts whose ostensible business was the repair of broken

necklaces--rivers of light poured out upon the table--but whose true

end seemed to be to raise money for angry Maharanees or young Rajahs.

There were Babus to whom Lurgan Sahib talked with austerity and

authority, but at the end of each interview he gave them money in

coined silver and currency notes. There were occasional gatherings of

long-coated theatrical natives who discussed metaphysics in English and

Bengali, to Mr Lurgan's great edification. He was always interested in

religions. At the end of the day, Kim and the Hindu boy--whose name

varied at Lurgan's pleasure--were expected to give a detailed account

of all that they had seen and heard--their view of each man's

character, as shown in his face, talk, and manner, and their notions of

his real errand. After dinner, Lurgan Sahib's fancy turned more to

what might be called dressing-up, in which game he took a most

informing interest. He could paint faces to a marvel; with a brush-dab

here and a line there changing them past recognition. The shop was

full of all manner of dresses and turbans, and Kim was apparelled

variously as a young Mohammedan of good family, an oilman, and

once--which was a joyous evening--as the son of an Oudh landholder in

the fullest of full dress. Lurgan Sahib had a hawk's eye to detect the

least flaw in the make-up; and lying on a worn teak-wood couch, would

explain by the half-hour together how such and such a caste talked, or

walked, or coughed, or spat, or sneezed, and, since 'hows' matter

little in this world, the 'why' of everything. The Hindu child played

this game clumsily. That little mind, keen as an icicle where tally of

jewels was concerned, could not temper itself to enter another's soul;

but a demon in Kim woke up and sang with joy as he put on the changing

dresses, and changed speech and gesture therewith.

Carried away by enthusiasm, he volunteered to show Lurgan Sahib one

evening how the disciples of a certain caste of fakir, old Lahore

acquaintances, begged doles by the roadside; and what sort of language

he would use to an Englishman, to a Punjabi farmer going to a fair, and

to a woman without a veil. Lurgan Sahib laughed immensely, and begged

Kim to stay as he was, immobile for half an hour--cross-legged,

ash-smeared, and wild-eyed, in the back room. At the end of that time

entered a hulking, obese Babu whose stockinged legs shook with fat, and

Kim opened on him with a shower of wayside chaff. Lurgan Sahib--this

annoyed Kim--watched the Babu and not the play.

'I think,' said the Babu heavily, lighting a cigarette, 'I am of

opeenion that it is most extraordinary and effeecient performance.

Except that you had told me I should have opined that--that--that you

were pulling my legs. How soon can he become approximately effeecient

chain-man? Because then I shall indent for him.'

'That is what he must learn at Lucknow.'

'Then order him to be jolly-dam'-quick. Good-night, Lurgan.' The Babu

swung out with the gait of a bogged cow.

When they were telling over the day's list of visitors, Lurgan Sahib

asked Kim who he thought the man might be.

'God knows!' said Kim cheerily. The tone might almost have deceived

Mahbub Ali, but it failed entirely with the healer of sick pearls.

'That is true. God, He knows; but I wish to know what you think.'

Kim glanced sideways at his companion, whose eye had a way of

compelling truth.

'I--I think he will want me when I come from the school,

but'--confidentially, as Lurgan Sahib nodded approval--'I do not

understand how he can wear many dresses and talk many tongues.'

'Thou wilt understand many things later. He is a writer of tales for a

certain Colonel. His honour is great only in Simla, and it is

noticeable that he has no name, but only a number and a letter--that is

a custom among us.'

'And is there a price upon his head too--as upon Mah--all the others?'

'Not yet; but if a boy rose up who is now sitting here and went--look,

the door is open!--as far as a certain house with a red-painted

veranda, behind that which was the old theatre in the Lower Bazar, and

whispered through the shutters: "Hurree Chunder Mookerjee bore the bad

news of last month", that boy might take away a belt full of rupees.'

'How many?' said Kim promptly.

'Five hundred--a thousand--as many as he might ask for.'

'Good. And for how long might such a boy live after the news was

told?' He smiled merrily at Lurgan's Sahib's very beard.

'Ah! That is to be well thought of. Perhaps if he were very clever,

he might live out the day--but not the night. By no means the night.'

'Then what is the Babu's pay if so much is put upon his head?'

'Eighty--perhaps a hundred--perhaps a hundred and fifty rupees; but the

pay is the least part of the work. From time to time, God causes men

to be born--and thou art one of them--who have a lust to go abroad at

the risk of their lives and discover news--today it may be of far-off

things, tomorrow of some hidden mountain, and the next day of some

near-by men who have done a foolishness against the State. These souls

are very few; and of these few, not more than ten are of the best.

Among these ten I count the Babu, and that is curious. How great,

therefore, and desirable must be a business that brazens the heart of a

Bengali!'

'True. But the days go slowly for me. I am yet a boy, and it is only

within two months I learned to write Angrezi. Even now I cannot read

it well. And there are yet years and years and long years before I can

be even a chain-man.'

'Have patience, Friend of all the World'--Kim started at the title.

'Would I had a few of the years that so irk thee. I have proved thee

in several small ways. This will not be forgotten when I make my