“In the Plains,” said Kim, “are always too many people. In the Hills, as I understand, there are fewer.”
“Oh! the Hills, and the snows upon the Hills.” The lami tore off a tiny square of paper fit to go in an amulet. “But what dost thou know of the Hills?”
“They are very close.” Kim thrust open the door and looked at the long, peaceful line of the Himalayas flushed in morning-gold. “Except in the dress of a Sahib, I have never set foot among them.”
The lama snuffed the wind wistfully.
“If we go North,”—Kim put the question to the waking sunrise—“would not much midday heat be avoided by walking among the lower hills at least? … Is the charm made, Holy One?”
“I have written the names of seven silly devils—not one of whom is worth a grain of dust in the eye. Thus do foolish women drag us from the Way!”
Hurree Babu came out from behind the dovecote washing his teeth with ostentatious ritual. Full-fleshed, heavy-haunched, bull-necked, and deep-voiced, he did not look like “a fearful man.” Kim signed almost imperceptibly that matters were in good train, and when the morning toilet was over, Hurree Babu, in flowery speech, came to do honour to the lama. They ate, of course, apart, and afterwards the old lady, more or less veiled behind a window, returned to the vital business of green-mango colics in the young. The lama’s knowledge of medicine was, of course, sympathetic only. He believed that the dung of a black horse, mixed with sulphur, and carried in a snake-skin, was a sound remedy for cholera; but the symbolism interested him far more than the science. Hurree Babu deferred to these views with enchanting politeness, so that the lama called him a courteous physician. Hurree Babu replied that he