Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/105

Rh word. 'Forty years ago that might have been said, and not without truth. Ay, thirty years ago. But it is the fault of this gadding up and down Hind that a king's widow must jostle with all the scum of the land, and be made a mock by beggars.'

'Great Queen,' said Kim promptly, for he heard her shaking with indignation. 'I am even what the Great Queen says I am; but none the less is my master holy. He has not yet heard the Great Queen's order that'

'Order! I order a Holy One—a teacher of the Law—to come and speak to a woman! Never!'

'Pity my stupidity. I thought it was given as an order'

'It was not. It was a petition. Does this make all clear?'

A silver coin clinked on the edge of the cart. Kim took it and salaamed profoundly. The old lady recognized that, as the eyes and the ears of the lama, he was to be propitiated.

'I am but the Holy One's disciple. When he has eaten he will come.'

'Oh, villain and shameless rogue!' The jewelled forefinger shook itself at him reprovingly; but he could hear the old lady's chuckle.

'Nay, what is it?' he said, dropping into his most caressing and confidential tone—the one, he knew, that few could resist. Is—there any need of a son in thy family? Speak freely, for we priests' That last was a direct plagiarism from a faquir by the Taksali Gate.

'We priests! Thou art not yet old enough to' She checked the joke with another laugh. 'Believe me, now and again, we women, O priest, think of other matters than sons. Moreover, my daughter has borne her man-child.'

'Two arrows in the quiver are better than one; and three are