Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/373

Rh the pride of life, she meant, but the pun is clumsy). When one cannot dance in the festival one must e'en look out of the window, and grandmothering takes all a woman's time. Thy master gives me all the charms I now desire for my daughter's eldest, by reason—is it?—that he is wholly free from sin. The hakim is brought very low these days. He goes about poisoning my servants for lack of their betters.'

'What hakim, mother?'

'That very Dacca man who gave me the pill which rent me in three pieces. He cast up like a strayed camel a week ago, vowing that he and thou had been blood-brothers together up Kulu way, and feigning great anxiety for thy health. He was very thin and hungry, so I gave orders to have him stuffed too—him and his anxiety.'

'I would see him if he is here.'

'He eats five times a day, and lances boils for the villagers to save himself from an apoplexy. He is so full of anxiety for thy health that he sticks to the cook-house door and stays himself with scraps. He will keep. We shall never get rid of him.'

'Send him here, mother,'—the twinkle returned to Kim's eyes for a flash—'and I will try.'

'I'll send him, but to chase him off is an ill turn. At least he had the sense to fish the Holy One out of the brook. Thus, as the Holy One did not say, acquiring merit.'

'He is a very wise hakim. Send him, mother.'

'Priest praising priest, a miracle! If he is any friend of thine (ye squabbled at your last meeting) I'll hale him here with horse ropes and and—give him a caste dinner afterward, my son. . . . Get up and see the world! This lying abed is the mother of seventy devils. . . my son! my son!'