Kim

is what you are afraid of, Colonel Creighton.'

'It's only a boy, after all.'

'Ye-es; but first, he has nothing to tell; and secondly, he knows what

would happen. Also, he is very fond of Mahbub, and of me a little.'

'Will he draw pay?' demanded the practical horse-dealer.

'Food and water allowance only. Twenty rupees a month.'

One advantage of the Secret Service is that it has no worrying audit.

That Service is ludicrously starved, of course, but the funds are

administered by a few men who do not call for vouchers or present

itemized accounts. Mahbub's eyes lighted with almost a Sikh's love of

money. Even Lurgan's impassive face changed. He considered the years

to come when Kim would have been entered and made to the Great Game

that never ceases day and night, throughout India. He foresaw honour

and credit in the mouths of a chosen few, coming to him from his pupil.

Lurgan Sahib had made E.23 what E.23 was, out of a bewildered,

impertinent, lying, little North-West Province man.

But the joy of these masters was pale and smoky beside the joy of Kim

when St Xavier's Head called him aside, with word that Colonel

Creighton had sent for him.

'I understand, O'Hara, that he has found you a place as an assistant

chain-man in the Canal Department: that comes of taking up

mathematics. It is great luck for you, for you are only sixteen; but

of course you understand that you do not become pukka [permanent] till

you have passed the autumn examination. So you must not think you are

going out into the world to enjoy yourself, or that your fortune is

made. There is a great deal of hard work before you. Only, if you

succeed in becoming pukka, you can rise, you know, to four hundred and

fifty a month.' Whereat the Principal gave him much good advice as to

his conduct, and his manners, and his morals; and others, his elders,

who had not been wafted into billets, talked as only Anglo-Indian lads

can, of favouritism and corruption. Indeed, young Cazalet, whose

father was a pensioner at Chunar, hinted very broadly that Colonel

Creighton's interest in Kim was directly paternal; and Kim, instead of

retaliating, did not even use language. He was thinking of the immense

fun to come, of Mahbub's letter of the day before, all neatly written

in English, making appointment for that afternoon in a house the very

name of which would have crisped the Principal's hair with horror...

Said Kim to Mahbub in Lucknow railway station that evening, above the

luggage-scales: 'I feared lest at the last, the roof would fall upon

me and cheat me. It is indeed all finished, O my father?'

Mahbub snapped his fingers to show the utterness of that end, and his

eyes blazed like red coals.

'Then where is the pistol that I may wear it?'

'Softly! A half-year, to run without heel-ropes. I begged that much

from Colonel Creighton Sahib. At twenty rupees a month. Old Red Hat

knows that thou art coming.'

'I will pay thee dustoorie [commission] on my pay for three months,'

said Kim gravely. 'Yea, two rupees a month. But first we must get rid

of these.' He plucked his thin linen trousers and dragged at his

collar. 'I have brought with me all that I need on the Road. My trunk

has gone up to Lurgan Sahib's.'

'Who sends his salaams to thee--Sahib.'

'Lurgan Sahib is a very clever man. But what dost thou do?'

'I go North again, upon the Great Game. What else? Is thy mind still

set on following old Red Hat?'

'Do not forget he made me that I am--though he did not know it. Year by

year, he sent the money that taught me.'

'I would have done as much--had it struck my thick head,' Mahbub

growled. 'Come away. The lamps are lit now, and none will mark thee

in the bazar. We go to Huneefa's house.'

On the way thither, Mahbub gave him much the same sort of advice as his

mother gave to Lemuel, and curiously enough, Mahbub was exact to point

out how Huneefa and her likes destroyed kings.

'And I remember,' he quoted maliciously, 'one who said, "Trust a snake

before an harlot, and an harlot before a Pathan, Mahbub Ali." Now,

excepting as to Pathans, of whom I am one, all that is true. Most true

is it in the Great Game, for it is by means of women that all plans

come to ruin and we lie out in the dawning with our throats cut. So it

happened to such a one.' He gave the reddest particulars.

'Then why--?' Kim paused before a filthy staircase that climbed to the

warm darkness of an upper chamber, in the ward that is behind Azim

Ullah's tobacco-shop. Those who know it call it The Birdcage--it is so

full of whisperings and whistlings and chirrupings.

The room, with its dirty cushions and half-smoked hookahs, smelt

abominably of stale tobacco. In one corner lay a huge and shapeless

woman clad in greenish gauzes, and decked, brow, nose, ear, neck,

wrist, arm, waist, and ankle with heavy native jewellery. When she

turned it was like the clashing of copper pots. A lean cat in the

balcony outside the window mewed hungrily. Kim checked, bewildered, at

the door-curtain.

'Is that the new stuff, Mahbub?' said Huneefa lazily, scarce troubling

to remove the mouthpiece from her lips. 'O Buktanoos!'--like most of

her kind, she swore by the Djinns--'O Buktanoos! He is very good to

look upon.'

'That is part of the selling of the horse,' Mahbub explained to Kim,

who laughed.

'I have heard that talk since my Sixth Day,' he replied, squatting by

the light. 'Whither does it lead?'

'To protection. Tonight we change thy colour. This sleeping under

roofs has blanched thee like an almond. But Huneefa has the secret of

a colour that catches. No painting of a day or two. Also, we fortify

thee against the chances of the Road. That is my gift to thee, my son.

Take out all metals on thee and lay them here. Make ready, Huneefa.'

Kim dragged forth his compass, Survey paint-box, and the new-filled

medicine-box. They had all accompanied his travels, and boylike he

valued them immensely.

The woman rose slowly and moved with her hands a little spread before

her. Then Kim saw that she was blind. 'No, no,' she muttered, 'the

Pathan speaks truth--my colour does not go in a week or a month, and

those whom I protect are under strong guard.'

'When one is far off and alone, it would not be well to grow blotched

and leprous of a sudden,' said Mahbub. 'When thou wast with me I could

oversee the matter. Besides, a Pathan is a fair-skin. Strip to the

waist now and look how thou art whitened.' Huneefa felt her way back

from an inner room. 'It is no matter, she cannot see.' He took a

pewter bowl from her ringed hand.

The dye-stuff showed blue and gummy. Kim experimented on the back of

his wrist, with a dab of cotton-wool; but Huneefa heard him.

'No, no,' she cried, 'the thing is not done thus, but with the proper

ceremonies. The colouring is the least part. I give thee the full

protection of the Road.'

'Tadoo? [magic],'said Kim, with a half start. He did not like the

white, sightless eyes. Mahbub's hand on his neck bowed him to the

floor, nose within an inch of the boards.

'Be still. No harm comes to thee, my son. I am thy sacrifice!'

He could not see what the woman was about, but heard the dish-clash of

her jewellery for many minutes. A match lit up the darkness; he caught

the well-known purr and fizzle of grains of incense. Then the room

filled with smoke--heavy aromatic, and stupefying. Through growing