Kim

report to the Colonel Sahib.' Then, changing suddenly into English

with a deep laugh:

'By Jove! O'Hara, I think there is a great deal in you; but you must

not become proud and you must not talk. You must go back to Lucknow

and be a good little boy and mind your book, as the English say, and

perhaps, next holidays if you care, you can come back to me!' Kim's

face fell. 'Oh, I mean if you like. I know where you want to go.'

Four days later a seat was booked for Kim and his small trunk at the

rear of a Kalka tonga. His companion was the whale-like Babu, who,

with a fringed shawl wrapped round his head, and his fat

openwork-stockinged left leg tucked under him, shivered and grunted in

the morning chill.

'How comes it that this man is one of us?' thought Kim considering the

jelly back as they jolted down the road; and the reflection threw him

into most pleasant day-dreams. Lurgan Sahib had given him five

rupees--a splendid sum--as well as the assurance of his protection if

he worked. Unlike Mahbub, Lurgan Sahib had spoken most explicitly of

the reward that would follow obedience, and Kim was content. If only,

like the Babu, he could enjoy the dignity of a letter and a number--and

a price upon his head! Some day he would be all that and more. Some

day he might be almost as great as Mahbub Ali! The housetops of his

search should be half India; he would follow Kings and Ministers, as in

the old days he had followed vakils and lawyers' touts across Lahore

city for Mahbub Ali's sake. Meantime, there was the present, and not at

all unpleasant, fact of St Xavier's immediately before him. There

would be new boys to condescend to, and there would be tales of holiday

adventures to hear. Young Martin, son of the tea-planter at Manipur,

had boasted that he would go to war, with a rifle, against the

head-hunters.

That might be, but it was certain young Martin had not been blown half

across the forecourt of a Patiala palace by an explosion of fireworks;

nor had he... Kim fell to telling himself the story of his own

adventures through the last three months. He could paralyse St

Xavier's--even the biggest boys who shaved--with the recital, were that

permitted. But it was, of course, out of the question. There would be

a price upon his head in good time, as Lurgan Sahib had assured him;

and if he talked foolishly now, not only would that price never be set,

but Colonel Creighton would cast him off--and he would be left to the

wrath of Lurgan Sahib and Mahbub Ali--for the short space of life that

would remain to him.

'So I should lose Delhi for the sake of a fish,' was his proverbial

philosophy. It behoved him to forget his holidays (there would always

remain the fun of inventing imaginary adventures) and, as Lurgan Sahib

had said, to work. Of all the boys hurrying back to St Xavier's, from

Sukkur in the sands to Galle beneath the palms, none was so filled with

virtue as Kimball O'Hara, jiggeting down to Umballa behind Hurree

Chunder Mookerjee, whose name on the books of one section of the

Ethnological Survey was R.17.

And if additional spur were needed, the Babu supplied it. After a huge

meal at Kalka, he spoke uninterruptedly. Was Kim going to school?

Then he, an M A of Calcutta University, would explain the advantages of

education. There were marks to be gained by due attention to Latin and

Wordsworth's Excursion (all this was Greek to Kim). French, too was

vital, and the best was to be picked up in Chandernagore a few miles

from Calcutta. Also a man might go far, as he himself had done, by

strict attention to plays called Lear and Julius Caesar, both much in

demand by examiners. Lear was not so full of historical allusions as

Julius Caesar; the book cost four annas, but could be bought

second-hand in Bow Bazar for two. Still more important than

Wordsworth, or the eminent authors, Burke and Hare, was the art and

science of mensuration. A boy who had passed his examination in these

branches--for which, by the way, there were no cram-books--could, by

merely marching over a country with a compass and a level and a

straight eye, carry away a picture of that country which might be sold

for large sums in coined silver. But as it was occasionally

inexpedient to carry about measuring-chains a boy would do well to know

the precise length of his own foot-pace, so that when he was deprived

of what Hurree Chunder called adventitious aids' he might still tread

his distances. To keep count of thousands of paces, Hurree Chunder's

experience had shown him nothing more valuable than a rosary of

eighty-one or a hundred and eight beads, for 'it was divisible and

sub-divisible into many multiples and sub-multiples'. Through the

volleying drifts of English, Kim caught the general trend of the talk,

and it interested him very much. Here was a new craft that a man could

tuck away in his head and by the look of the large wide world unfolding

itself before him, it seemed that the more a man knew the better for

him.

Said the Babu when he had talked for an hour and a half 'I hope some

day to enjoy your offeecial acquaintance. Ad interim, if I may be

pardoned that expression, I shall give you this betel-box, which is

highly valuable article and cost me two rupees only four years ago.' It

was a cheap, heart-shaped brass thing with three compartments for

carrying the eternal betel-nut, lime and pan-leaf; but it was filled

with little tabloid-bottles.

'That is reward of merit for your performance in character of that holy

man. You see, you are so young you think you will last for ever and

not take care of your body. It is great nuisance to go sick in the

middle of business. I am fond of drugs myself, and they are handy to

cure poor people too. These are good Departmental drugs--quinine and

so on. I give it you for souvenir. Now good-bye. I have urgent

private business here by the roadside.'

He slipped out noiselessly as a cat, on the Umballa road, hailed a

passing cart and jingled away, while Kim, tongue-tied, twiddled the

brass betel-box in his hands.

The record of a boy's education interests few save his parents, and, as

you know, Kim was an orphan. It is written in the books of St Xavier's

in Partibus that a report of Kim's progress was forwarded at the end of

each term to Colonel Creighton and to Father Victor, from whose hands

duly came the money for his schooling. It is further recorded in the

same books that he showed a great aptitude for mathematical studies as

well as map-making, and carried away a prize (The Life of Lord

Lawrence, tree-calf, two vols., nine rupees, eight annas) for

proficiency therein; and the same term played in St Xavier's eleven

against the Alighur Mohammedan College, his age being fourteen years

and ten months. He was also re-vaccinated (from which we may assume

that there had been another epidemic of smallpox at Lucknow) about the

same time. Pencil notes on the edge of an old muster-roll record that

he was punished several times for 'conversing with improper persons',

and it seems that he was once sentenced to heavy pains for 'absenting

himself for a day in the company of a street beggar'. That was when he

got over the gate and pleaded with the lama through a whole day down

the banks of the Gumti to accompany him on the Road next holidays--for

one month--for a little week; and the lama set his face as a flint

against it, averring that the time had not yet come. Kim's business,

said the old man as they ate cakes together, was to get all the wisdom