“Very fat; but I perceived in a little his mind was wholly given up to useless things—such as devils and charms and the form and fashion of our tea-drinkings in the monasteries, and by what road we initiated the novices. A man abounding in questions; but he was a friend of thine, chela . He told me that thou wast on the road to much honour as a scribe. And I see thou art a physician.”
“Yes, that am I—a scribe, when I am a Sahib, but it is set aside when I come as thy disciple. I have accomplished the years appointed for a Sahib.”
“As it were a novice?” said the lama, nodding his head. “Art thou freed from the schools? I would not have thee unripe.”
“I am all free. In due time I take service under the Government as a scribe—”
“Not as a warrior. That is well.”
“But first I come to wander—with thee. Therefore I am here. Who begs for thee, these days?” he went on quickly. The ice was thin.
“Very often I beg myself; but, as thou knowest, I am seldom here, except when I come to look again at my disciple. From one end to another of Hind have I travelled afoot and in the te-rain . A great and a wonderful land! But here, when I put in, is as though I were in my own Bhotiyal.”
He looked round the little clean cell complacently. A low cushion gave him a seat, on which he had disposed himself in the cross-legged attitude of the Bodhisat emerging from meditation; a black teakwood table, not twenty inches high, set with copper teacups, was before him. In one corner stood a tiny altar, also of heavily carved teak, bearing a copper-gilt image of the seated Buddha and fronted by a lamp, an incense-holder, and a pair of copper flowerpots.