“ ’Ere, you! ’Alt! Stop!” said a high voice at his heels. “I’ve got to look after you. My orders are not to let you out of my sight. Where are you goin’?”
It was the drummer-boy who had been hanging round him all the forenoon—a fat and freckled person of about fourteen, and Kim loathed him from the soles of his boots to his cap-ribbons.
“To the bazaar—to get sweets—for you,” said Kim, after thought.
“Well, the bazaar’s out o’ bounds. If we go there we’ll get a dressing-down. You come back.”
“How near can we go?” Kim did not know what bounds meant, but he wished to be polite—for the present.
“ ’Ow near? ’Ow far, you mean! We can go as far as that tree down the road.”
“Then I will go there.”
“All right. I ain’t goin’. It’s too ’ot. I can watch you from ’ere. It’s no good your runnin’ away. If you did, they’d spot you by your clothes. That’s regimental stuff you’re wearin’. There ain’t a picket in Umballa wouldn’t ’ead you back quicker than you started out.”
This did not impress Kim as much as the knowledge that his raiment would tire him out if he tried to run. He slouched to the tree at the corner of a bare road leading towards the bazaar, and eyed the natives passing. Most of them were barrack-servants of the lowest caste. Kim hailed a sweeper, who promptly retorted with a piece of unnecessary insolence, in the natural belief that the European boy could not follow it. The low, quick answer undeceived him. Kim put his fettered soul into it, thankful for the late chance to abuse somebody in the tongue he knew best. “And now, go to the nearest letter-writer in the bazaar and tell him to come here. I would write a letter.”