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that has not yet prepared my pipe?'

It was hastily thrust in by a hillman, and a trickle of thick smoke
from each corner of the curtains showed that peace was restored.

If Kim had walked proudly the day before, disciple of a holy man,
today he paced with tenfold pride in the train of a semi-royal
procession, with a recognized place under the patronage of an old
lady of charming manners and infinite resource. The escort, their
heads tied up native-fashion, fell in on either side the cart,
shuffling enormous clouds of dust.

The lama and Kim walked a little to one side; Kim chewing his stick
of sugarcane, and making way for no one under the status of a
priest. They could hear the old lady's tongue clack as steadily as
a rice-husker. She bade the escort tell her what was going on on
the road; and so soon as they were clear of the parao she flung
back the curtains and peered out, her veil a third across her face.
Her men did not eye her directly when she addressed them, and thus
the proprieties were more or less observed.

A dark, sallowish District Superintendent of Police, faultlessly
uniformed, an Englishman, trotted by on a tired horse, and, seeing
from her retinue what manner of person she was, chaffed her.

'O mother,' he cried, 'do they do this in the zenanas? Suppose an
Englishman came by and saw that thou hast no nose?'

'What?' she shrilled back. 'Thine own mother has no nose? Why say
so, then, on the open road?'

It was a fair counter. The Englishman threw up his hand with the
gesture of a man hit at sword-play. She laughed and nodded.

'Is this a face to tempt virtue aside?' She withdrew all her veil
and stared at him.

It was by no means lovely, but as the man gathered up his reins he
called it a Moon of Paradise, a Disturber of Integrity, and a few
other fantastic epithets which doubled her up with mirth.

'That is a nut-cut [rogue],' she said. 'All police-constables are
nut-cuts; but the police-wallahs are the worst. Hai, my son, thou
hast never learned all that since thou camest from Belait [Europe].
Who suckled thee?'

'A pahareen - a hillwoman of Dalhousie, my mother. Keep thy beauty
under a shade - O Dispenser of Delights,' and he was gone.

'These be the sort' - she took a fine judicial tone, and stuffed
her mouth with pan - 'These be the sort to oversee justice. They
know the land and the customs of the land. The others, all new from
Europe, suckled by white women and learning our tongues from books,
are worse than the pestilence. They do harm to Kings.' Then she
told a long, long tale to the world at large, of an ignorant young
policeman who had disturbed some small Hill Rajah, a ninth cousin
of her own, in the matter of a trivial land-case, winding up with a
quotation from a work by no means devotional.

Then her mood changed, and she bade one of the escort ask whether
the lama would walk alongside and discuss matters of religion. So
Kim dropped back into the dust and returned to his sugar-cane.

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