Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/192

166 found nothing. So next morning he was angry. Ho! Ho! And I also used the news when I fell into the hands of that white regiment with their Bull!'

'That was foolishness.' Mahbub scowled. 'News is not meant to be thrown about like dung-cakes, but used sparingly—like .' 'So I think now, and moreover,) it did me no sort of good. But that was very long ago,'—he made as to brush it all away with a thin brown hand,—'and since then, and especially in the night under the punkah at the madrissah, I have thought very greatly.'

'Is it permitted to ask whither the Heaven-born's thought might have led?' said Mahbub, with an elaborate sarcasm, smoothing his scarlet beard.

'It is permitted,' said Kim, and threw back the very tone. 'They say at the madrissah that no Sahib must tell a black man that he has made a fault.'

Mahbub's hand shot into his bosom, for to call a Pathan a 'black man' (kala admi) is a blood insult. Then he remembered and laughed. 'Speak, Sahib, thy black man hears.'

'But,' said Kim, 'I am not a Sahib, and I say I made a fault when I cursed thee, Mahbub Ali, on the day at Umballa I thought I was betrayed by a Pathan. I was senseless; for I was but newly caught, and I wished to kill that low-caste drummer-boy. I say now, Hajji, that it was well done; and I see my road all clear before me. I will stay in the madrissah, and I will learn their teaching till I am ripe.'

'Well said. Especially are distances and numbers and the manner of using compasses to be learned—in that game one waits in the halls above to show thee.'

'I will learn their teaching upon a condition—that my time