Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/354

322 'Then I must get food from the village. Oh, the weary road!' Kim felt that he too needed rest.

'That is lawful. Let us eat and go. The Arrow fell in Plains. . . but I yielded to desire. Make ready, chela.' Kim turned to the woman with the turquoise headgear who had been idly pitching pebbles over the cliff. She smiled very kindly.

'I found him like a strayed buffalo in a rice-field—the Babu; snorting and sneezing with cold. He was so hungry that he forgot his dignity and gave me sweet words. The Sahibs have nothing.' She flung out an empty palm. 'One is very sick—about the stomach. Thy work?'

Kim nodded with a bright eye.

'I spoke to the Bengali first—and to the people of a near-by village after. The Sahibs will be given food as they need it—nor will the people ask money. The plunder is already distributed. The Babu makes lying speeches to the Sahibs. Why does he not leave them?'

'Out of the greatness of his heart.'

'Was never a Bengali yet had one bigger than a dried walnut. But it is no matter. . . . Now as to walnuts. After service comes reward. I have said the village is thine.'

'It is my loss,' Kim began. 'Even now I have planned desirable things in my heart which—there is no need to go through the compliments proper to these occasions.' He sighed deeply. . . 'but my master, led by a vision'

'Huh! What can old eyes see except a full begging-bowl?'

—'Turns from this village to the plains again.'

'Bid him stay.'

Kim shook his head. 'I know my Holy One, and his rage if he be crossed,' he replied portentously. 'His curses shake the hills.'