Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/372

340 days and nights passed like bars of white and black, opening and shutting. I was not sick, I was only tired.'

'A lethargy that comes by right some few score years later. But it is all done now.'

'Maharanee,' Kim began, but led by the look in her eye, changed it to the title of plain love—'Mother, I owe my life to thee. How shall I make thanks? Ten thousand blessings upon thy house and' 'The house be unblessed.' (It is impossible to give exactly the old lady's word.) 'Thank the Gods as a priest if thou wilt, but thank me if thou carest as a son. Heavens above! Have I shifted thee and lifted thee and slapped and twisted thy ten toes to find texts flung at my head? Somewhere a mother must have born thee—to break her heart. What used thou to her? Son?'

'I had no mother, my mother,' said Kim. 'She died, they tell me, when I was young.'

'Hai mai! Then none can say I have robbed her of any right if, when thou takest the road again and this house is but one of a thousand used for shelter and forgotten, after an easy flung blessing. No matter. I need no blessings, but—but' She stamped her foot at the poor relation: 'Take up the trays to the house. What is the good of stale food in the room, oh woman of ill-omen?'

'I ha—have borne a son in my time too, but he died,' whimpered the bowed sister figure behind the chudder. 'Thou knowest he died! I only waited for the order to take away the tray.'

'It is I that am the woman of ill-omen,' cried the old lady penitently. 'We that go down to the chattris (the big umbrellas above the burning-ghats where the priests take their last dues), clutch hard at the bearers of the chattis (water-jars—young folk full