Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/195

169 many white boys; but Kim was utterly happy. Change of scene, service, and surroundings were the breath of his little nostrils, and thinking of the neat white cots of St. Xavier's all arow under the punkah gave him joy as keen as the repetition of the multiplication table in English.

'I am very old,' he thought sleepily. 'Every month I become a year more old. I was very young, and a fool to boot, when I took Mahbub's message to Umballa. Even when I was with that white regiment I was very young and small and had no wisdom. But now I learn every day, and in three years the Colonel will take me out of the madrissah and let me go upon the road with Mahbub hunting for horses' pedigrees, or maybe I shall go by myself; or maybe I shall find the lama and go with him. Yes; that is best. To walk again as a chela with my lama when he comes back to Benares.' The thoughts came more slowly and disconnectedly. He was plunging into a beautiful dreamland when his ears caught a whisper, thin and sharp, above the monotonous babble round the fire. It seemed to come from beneath the iron-skinned horse-truck.

'He is not here then?' 'Where should he be but roystering in the city? Who looks for a rat in a frog-pond? Come away. He is not the man.'

'He must not go back beyond the passes a second time. It is the order.'

'Then get some woman to drug him. It is a few rupees only, and there is no evidence.'

'Except the woman. It must be a more sure matter; and remember the price upon his head.'

'Ay, but the Sirkar's police have a long arm, and we are far from the border. If it were in Peshawur now!'