They heaped the tray again with odds and ends gathered from the shop, and even the kitchen, and every time the child won, till Kim marvelled.
“Bind my eyes—let me feel once with my fingers, and even then I will leave thee opened-eyed behind,” he challenged.
Kim stamped with vexation when the lad made his boast good.
“If it were men—or horses,” he said, “I could do better. This playing with tweezers and knives and scissors is too little.”
“Learn first—teach later,” said Lurgan Sahib. “Is he thy master?”
“Truly. But how is it done?”
“By doing it many times over till it is done perfectly—for it is worth doing.”
The Hindu boy, in highest feather, actually patted Kim on the back.
“Do not despair,” he said. “I myself will teach thee.”
“And I will see that thou art well taught,” said Lurgan Sahib, still speaking in the vernacular, “for except my boy here—it was foolish of him to buy so much white arsenic when, if he had asked, I could have given it—except my boy here I have not in a long time met with one better worth teaching. And there are ten days more ere thou canst return to Lucknao where they teach nothing—at the long price. We shall, I think, be friends.”