Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/222

196 little in this world, the 'why' of everything. The Hindu boy played this game clumsily. The little mind, keen as an icicle where tally of jewels was concerned, could not temper itself to enter into another's soul; but there was that in Kim which woke up and sang with joy as he put on the changing dresses, and changed his speech and gesture therewith.

Carried away by enthusiasm, he volunteered to show Lurgan Sahib one evening how the disciples of a certain caste of faquir, old Lahore acquaintances, begged doles by the roadside, and what sort of language he would use to an Englishman, to a Punjabi farmer going to a fair, and to a woman without a veil. Lurgan Sahib laughed immensely, and begged Kim to stay as he was, immobile for half an hour—cross-legged, ash-smeared, and wild-eyed, in the back room. At the end of that time entered a hulking, obese Babu whose stockinged legs shook with fat, and Kim hailedhim with a shower of wayside chaff. Lurgan Sahib—this annoyed him—watched the Babu and not the play. 'I think,' said the Babu heavily, lighting a cigarette, 'I am of opeenion that it is most extraordinary and effeecient performance. Except that you had told me I should have opined that—that you were pulling my legs. How soon can he become approximately effeecient chainman? Because then I shall indent for him.'

'That is what he must learn at Lucknow.'

'Then order him to be jolly damn quick. Good-night, Lurgan.'

The Babu swung out with the gait of a bagged cow.

When they were telling over the day's list of visitors, Lurgan Sahib asked Kim who he thought the Babu might be.

'God knows,' said Kim cheerily. The tone might almost have deceived Mahbub Ali, but it failed entirely with the healer of sick pearls.