“Is it kick me out? No fear! For besides being well respected and well liked, I’m a magician.”
“Oh, come, that’s all rot!” exclaimed Shafto impatiently.
“’Tis not,” he rejoined in a vigorously defensive tone; “and ’tis little ye know. This is a queer country; the people are terribly superstitious and weak in themselves, on account of nats and bad spirits.”
“Oh, that I can believe,” replied Shafto; “your pals in the gharry could tell you something about bad spirits.”
“Wait now and I’ll explain,” said the pongye, with an intimate gesture of his great bony hand.
“Sometimes I’ve a sort of ache to be mixing up with European soldiers—even if it’s only for a couple of hours.” After a pause he added in a thoughtful tone, “For ye see I was wance a soldier meself.”
“What!”
“It’s the pure truth I’m tellin’ ye—a corporal, with two good-conduct stripes; the other week Paddy Nolan had drink taken, and nothin’ would please him but that he must drive, so he turned off the garriwan and made a cruel bad hand of it—as you saw for yourself! They were a couple of raw new ponies, come down out of last drove, and unused to trams and motors, and frightened dancing mad; only for you heading them off, we were all as dead as mutton.”
“But how did you get into the Burmese priesthood?” inquired Shafto with abrupt irrelevance.
“It was like this, sorr, I’m country-born; me father was a sergeant in the Irish Rifles, me mother was a half-caste—an Anglo-Indian from Ceylon—so I’m half Irish, quarter Cingalese. I was left an orphan when I was seven years old and educated at the Lawrence Asylum. I always had a wonderful twist for languages; it came as easy as breathing to me to talk Tamil or Telugu. Well, when I was close on eighteen I enlisted and put in seven years with the Colours, mostly in Bengal; then we come over here and lay in Mandalay and, after a bit, I—somehow got lost.”