always, alone among the images. The others were very human; pressing small comforts upon the old man—a betel-box, a fine new iron pencase, a food-bag, and suchlike—warning him against the dangers of the world without, and prophesying a happy end to the Search. Meantime Kim, lonelier than ever, squatted on the steps, and swore to himself in the language of St. Xavier’s.
“But it is my own fault,” he concluded. “With Mahbub, I ate Mahbub’s bread, or Lurgan Sahib’s. At St. Xavier’s, three meals a day. Here I must jolly-well look out for myself. Besides, I am not in good training. How I could eat a plate of beef now! … Is it finished, Holy One?”
The lama, both hands raised, intoned a final blessing in ornate Chinese. “I must lean on thy shoulder,” said he, as the temple gates closed. “We grow stiff, I think.”
The weight of a six-foot man is not light to steady through miles of crowded streets, and Kim, loaded down with bundles and packages for the way, was glad to reach the shadow of the railway bridge.
“Here we eat,” he said resolutely, as the Kamboh, blue-robed and smiling, hove in sight, a basket in one hand and the child in the other.
“Fall to, Holy Ones!” he cried from fifty yards. (They were by the shoal under the first bridge-span, out of sight of hungry priests.) “Rice and good curry, cakes all warm and well scented with hing , curds and sugar. King of my fields,”—this to the small son—“let us show these holy men that we Jats of Jullundur can pay a service … I had heard the Jains would eat nothing that they had not cooked, but truly”—he looked away politely over the broad river—“where there is no eye there is no caste.”
“And we,” said Kim, turning his back and heaping a leaf-platter for the lama, “are beyond all castes.”