Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/171

Rh tempted at stations, when the sweetmeat-seller came along with his wares, to chaff him in the vernacular, and to be rude to the ticket-collector.

Presently the Colonel sent for him, and talked for a long time. So far as Kim could gather, he was to be diligent and enter the Survey of India as a chainman. If he were very good, and passed the proper examinations, he would be earning thirty rupees a month at seventeen years old, and Colonel Creighton would see that he found suitable employment.

Kim understood perhaps one word in three of this talk, to which he listened politely, an eye on the dusty landscape of the Northwest. The Colonel spoke always in Urdu. No man could be a fool who knew the language so intimately, who moved so gently and silently, and whose eyes were so different from the dull fat eyes of other Sahibs. 'Yes, and thou must learn how to make pictures of roads and mountains and rivers—to carry these pictures in thy eye till a suitable time comes to set them upon paper. Perhaps some day, when thou art a chainman, I may say to thee when we are working together: "Go across those hills and see what lies beyond." Then one will say: "There are bad people living in those hills who will slay the chainman if he be seen to look like a Sahib." What wouldst thou do then?'

Kim thought. Would it be safe to return the Colonel's lead?

'I would tell thee what that other man had said.'

'But if I answered: "I will give thee a hundred rupees for knowledge of what is behind those hills—for a picture of a river and a little news of "what the people say in the villages there"?'

'How can I tell? I am only a boy. Wait till I am a man.'