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A supper for thee and me!

The child shrieked with joy, and snatched at the dark, glancing
beads.

'Oho!' said the old soldier. 'Whence hadst thou that song, despiser
of this world?'

'I learned it in Pathankot - sitting on a doorstep,' said the lama
shyly. 'It is good to be kind to babes.'

'As I remember, before the sleep came on us, thou hadst told me
that marriage and bearing were darkeners of the true light,
stumbling-blocks upon the Way. Do children drop from Heaven in thy
country? Is it the Way to sing them songs?'

'No man is all perfect,' said the lama gravely, recoiling the
rosary. 'Run now to thy mother, little one.'

'Hear him!' said the soldier to Kim. 'He is ashamed for that he has
made a child happy. There was a very good householder lost in thee,
my brother. Hai, child!' He threw it a pice. 'Sweetmeats are always
sweet.' And as the little figure capered away into the sunshine:
'They grow up and become men. Holy One, I grieve that I slept in
the midst of thy preaching. Forgive me.'

'We be two old men,' said the lama. 'The fault is mine. I listened
to thy talk of the world and its madness, and one fault led to the
next.'

'Hear him! What harm do thy Gods suffer from play with a babe? And
that song was very well sung. Let us go on and I will sing thee the
song of Nikal Seyn before Delhi - the old song.'

And they fared out from the gloom of the mango tope, the old man's
high, shrill voice ringing across the field, as wail by long-drawn
wail he unfolded the story of Nikal Seyn [Nicholson] - the song
that men sing in the Punjab to this day. Kim was delighted, and the
lama listened with deep interest.

'Ahi! Nikal Seyn is dead - he died before Delhi! Lances of the
North, take vengeance for Nikal Seyn.' He quavered it out to the
end, marking the trills with the flat of his sword on the pony's
rump.

'And now we come to the Big Road,' said he, after receiving the
compliments of Kim; for the lama was markedly silent. 'It is long
since I have ridden this way, but thy boy's talk stirred me. See,
Holy One - the Great Road which is the backbone of all Hind. For
the most part it is shaded, as here, with four lines of trees; the
middle road - all hard - takes the quick traffic. In the days before
rail-carriages the Sahibs travelled up and down here in hundreds.
Now there are only country-carts and such like. Left and right is
the rougher road for the heavy carts - grain and cotton and timber,
fodder, lime and hides. A man goes in safety here for at every few
koss is a police-station. The police are thieves and extortioners
(I myself would patrol it with cavalry - young recruits under a
strong captain), but at least they do not suffer any rivals. All
castes and kinds of men move here.

'Look! Brahmins and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and
bunnias, pilgrims
and potters - all the world going and coming. It
is to me as a river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a

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