Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/218

192 might have made me ill, child, and then a stranger would have guarded the jewels. Come!'

The child, heavy-eyed with much weeping, crept out from behind the bale and flung himself passionately at Lurgan Sahib's feet, with an extravagance of remorse that impressed even Kim.

'I will look into the ink-pools—I will faithfully guard the jewels. Oh, my father and my mother, send him away.' He indicated Kim with a backward jerk of his bare heel.

'Not yet—not yet. In a little while he will go away again. But now he is at school—at a new madrissah—and thou shalt be his teacher. Play the play of the jewels against him. I will keep tally.'

The child dried his tears at once, and dashed to the back of the shop, whence he returned with a copper tray.

'Give me!' he said to Lurgan Sahib. 'Let them come from thy hand, for he may say that I knew them before.'

'Gently—gently,' the man replied, and from a drawer under the table dealt a half handful of clattering trifles into the tray.

'Now,' said the child, waving an old copy of a paper. 'Look on them as long as thou wilt, stranger. Count and, if need be, handle. One look is enough for me. He turned his back proudly.

'But what is the game?' Kim asked.

'When thou hast counted and handled and art sure that thou canst remember them all, I cover them with this paper, and thou must tell over the tally to Lurgan Sahib. I will write mine.'

'Oah!' The instinct of competition waked in his breast. He bent over the tray. There were but fifteen stones on it. 'That is easy,' he said after a minute. The child slipped the paper over the winking jewels and scribbled in a limp-backed native account-book.