Kim - The Original Classic Edition. Kipling Rudyard

'We priests! Thou art not yet old enough to--' She checked the joke with another laugh. 'Believe me, now and again, we women, O

       priest, think of other matters than sons. Moreover, my daughter has borne her man-child.'

       'Two arrows in the quiver are better than one; and three are better still.' Kim quoted the proverb with a meditative cough, looking discreetly earthward.

       'True--oh, true. But perhaps that will come. Certainly those down-country Brahmins are utterly useless. I sent gifts and monies and gifts again to them, and they prophesied.'

       'Ah,' drawled Kim, with infinite contempt, 'they prophesied!' A professional could have done no better.

       'And it was not till I remembered my own Gods that my prayers were heard. I chose an auspicious hour, and--perhaps thy Holy One has heard of the Abbot of the Lung-Cho lamassery. It was to him I put the matter, and behold in the due time all came about as I desired. The Brahmin in the house of the father of my daughter's son has since said that it was through his prayers--which is a little error that I will explain to him when we reach our journey's end. And so afterwards I go to Buddh Gaya, to make shraddha for the father of my children.'

       'Thither go we.'

       'Doubly auspicious,' chirruped the old lady. 'A second son at least!'

       'O Friend of all the World!' The lama had waked, and, simply as a child bewildered in a strange bed, called for Kim.

       'I come! I come, Holy One!' He dashed to the fire, where he found the lama already surrounded by dishes of food, the hillmen vis-

       ibly adoring him and the Southerners looking sourly.

       'Go back! Withdraw!' Kim cried. 'Do we eat publicly like dogs?' They finished the meal in silence, each turned a little from the other, and Kim topped it with a native-made cigarette.

       'Have I not said an hundred times that the South is a good land? Here is a virtuous and high-born widow of a Hill Rajah on pilgrim-

       age, she says, to Buddha Gay. She it is sends us those dishes; and when thou art well rested she would speak to thee.'

       'Is this also thy work?' The lama dipped deep into his snuff-gourd.

       'Who else watched over thee since our wonderful journey began?' Kim's eyes danced in his head as he blew the rank smoke through his nostrils and stretched him on the dusty ground. 'Have I failed to oversee thy comforts, Holy One?'

       'A blessing on thee.' The lama inclined his solemn head. 'I have known many men in my so long life, and disciples not a few. But

       to none among men, if so be thou art woman-born, has my heart gone out as it has to thee--thoughtful, wise, and courteous; but something of a small imp.'

       'And I have never seen such a priest as thou.' Kim considered the benevolent yellow face wrinkle by wrinkle. 'It is less than three days since we took the road together, and it is as though it were a hundred years.'

       'Perhaps in a former life it was permitted that I should have rendered thee some service. Maybe'--he smiled--'I freed thee from a trap; or, having caught thee on a hook in the days when I was not enlightened, cast thee back into the river.'

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       'Maybe,' said Kim quietly. He had heard this sort of speculation again and again, from the mouths of many whom the English would not consider imaginative. 'Now, as regards that woman in the bullock-cart. I think she needs a second son for her daughter.'

       'That is no part of the Way,' sighed the lama. 'But at least she is from the Hills. Ah, the Hills, and the snow of the Hills!'