“Listen to me,” said the Colonel from the veranda, speaking in the vernacular. “In three days thou wilt go with me to Lucknow, seeing and hearing new things all the while. Therefore sit still for three days and do not run away. Thou wilt go to school at Lucknow.”
“Shall I meet my Holy One there?” Kim whimpered.
“At least Lucknow is nearer to Benares than Umballa. It may be thou wilt go under my protection. Mahbub Ali knows this, and he will be angry if thou returnest to the Road now. Remember—much has been told me which I do not forget.”
“I will wait,” said Kim, “but the boys will beat me.”
Then the bugles blew for dinner.
CHAPTER VII
Unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised
With idiot moons and stars retracing stars?
Creep thou betweene—thy coming’s all unnoised.
Heaven hath her high, as Earth her baser, wars.
Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fraye
(By Adam’s, fathers’, own, sin bound alway);
Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say
Which planet mends thy threadbare fate or mars!
Sir John Christie.
In the afternoon the red-faced schoolmaster told Kim that he had been “struck off the strength”, which conveyed no meaning to him till he was ordered to go away and play. Then he ran to the bazar, and found the young letter-writer to whom he owed a stamp.
“Now I pay,” said Kim royally, “and now I need another letter to be written.”
“Mahbub Ali is in Umballa,” said the writer jauntily. He was, by virtue of his office, a bureau of general misinformation.