Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/107

Rh, she says, to Buddh-Gaya. She it is sends us those dishes; and when thou art well rested she would speak to thee.'

'Is this also thy work?' The lama dipped deep into his snuff-gourd.

'Who else watched over thee since our wonderful journey began?' Kim's eyes danced in his head as he blew the rank smoke through his nostrils and stretched him on the dusty ground. 'Have I failed to oversee thy comforts, Holy One?'

'A blessing on thee.' The lama inclined his solemn head. 'I have known many men in my so long life, and disciples not a few. But to none among men, if so be thou art woman-born, has my heart gone out as it has to thee—thoughtful, wise, and courteous, but something of a small imp.'

'And I have never seen such a Holy One as thou.' Kim considered the benevolent yellow face wrinkle by wrinkle. 'It is less than three days since we took road together, and it is as though it were a hundred years.'

'Perhaps in a former life it was permitted that I should have rendered thee some service. May be'—he smiled—'I freed thee from a trap; or, having caught thee on a hook in the days when I was not enlightened, cast thee back into the river again.'

'May be,' said Kim quietly. He had heard this sort of speculation again and again, from the mouths of many men whom an Englishman would not consider imaginative. 'Now as regards that woman in the bullock-cart, I think she needs a second son for her daughter.'

'That is no part of the Way,' said the lama. 'But at least she is from the hills. Ah, the hills, and the snow of the hills!'

He rose and stalked to the cart. Kim would have given his ears to come too, but the lama did not invite him; and the few