thing here?”—he waved the note of hand—“I don’t know Gobind Sahai: or his bank, which may be a hole in a wall.”
“ You’ve never been a subaltern in debt. I’ll cash it if you like, and send you the vouchers in proper order.”
“But with all your own work too! It’s askin’—”
“It’s not the least trouble indeed. You see, as an ethnologist, the thing’s very interesting to me. I’d like to make a note of it for some Government work that I’m doing. The transformation of a regimental badge like your Red Bull into a sort of fetish that the boy follows is very interesting.”
“But I can’t thank you enough.”
“There’s one thing you can do. All we Ethnological men are as jealous as jackdaws of one another’s discoveries. They’re of no interest to anyone but ourselves, of course, but you know what book-collectors are like. Well, don’t say a word, directly or indirectly, about the Asiatic side of the boy’s character—his adventures and his prophecy, and so on. I’ll worm them out of the boy later on and—you see?”