Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/106

86 better still.' Kim quoted the proverb with a meditative drawl, looking discreetly earthward.

'True—oh, true. But perhaps that will come. Certainly those down-country Brahmins are utterly useless. I sent gifts and monies and gifts again to them, and they prophesied.'

'Ah,' said Kim, with infinite contempt, 'they prophesied!' A professional could have done no better.

'And it was not till I remembered my own gods that my prayers were heard. I chose an auspicious hour, and—perhaps thy Holy One has heard of the Abbot of the Deng-cho lamassery. It was to him I put the matter, and behold in the due time all came about as I desired. The Brahmin in the house of the father of my daughter's son has since said that it was through his prayers—which is a little matter which I will make plain to him when we reach our journey's end. And so afterwards I go to Buddh-Gaya, to make shraddha for the father of my children.'

'Thither go we.'

'Doubly auspicious.' chirruped the old lady. 'A second son at least!'

'O Friend of all the World!' The lama had waked, and, simply as a child bewildered in a strange bed, called for Kim.

'I come! I come, Holy One!' He dashed to the fire, where he found the lama already surrounded by dishes of food, the hillmen visibly adoring him and the Southerners looking sourly.

'Go back! Withdraw!' Kim cried. 'Do we eat publicly like dogs?' They finished the meal in silence, each a little apart from the other, and Kim topped it with a native-made cigarette.

'Did I not say an hundred times that the South is a good land? Here is a virtuous and high-born widow of a hill Rajah on