vending preparations of great value. He has even papers, printed in Angrezi, telling what things he has done for weak-backed men and slack women. He has been here four days; but hearing ye were coming ( hakims and priests are snake and tiger the world over) he has, as I take it, gone to cover.”
While she drew breath after this volley, the ancient servant, sitting unrebuked on the edge of the torchlight, muttered: “This house is a cattle-pound, as it were, for all charlatans and—priests. Let the boy stop eating mangoes … but who can argue with a grandmother?” He raised his voice respectfully: “Sahiba, the hakim sleeps after his meat. He is in the quarters behind the dovecote.”
Kim bristled like an expectant terrier. To outface and down-talk a Calcutta-taught Bengali, a voluble Dacca drug-vendor, would be a good game. It was not seemly that the lama, and incidentally himself, should be thrown aside for such an one.