“But thou art still the shameless beggar-brat of the parao,” she shrilled. “I have not forgotten thee. Wash ye and eat. The father of my daughter’s son is gone away awhile. So we poor women are dumb and useless.”
For proof, she harangued the entire household unsparingly till food and drink were brought; and in the evening—the smoke-scented evening, copper-dun and turquoise across the fields—it pleased her to order her palanquin to be set down in the untidy forecourt by smoky torchlight; and there, behind not too closely drawn curtains, she gossiped.
“Had the Holy One come alone, I should have received him otherwise; but with this rogue, who can be too careful?”
“Maharanee,” said Kim, choosing as always the amplest title, “is it my fault that none other than a Sahib—a polis-sahib—called the Maharanee whose face he—” “Chutt! That was on the pilgrimage. When we travel—thou knowest the proverb.”
“Called the Maharanee a Breaker of Hearts and a Dispenser of Delights?”
“To remember that! It was true. So he did. That was in the time of the bloom of my beauty.” She chuckled like a contented parrot above the sugar lump. “Now tell me of thy goings and comings—as much as may be without shame. How many maids, and whose wives, hang upon thine eyelashes? Ye hail from Benares? I would have gone there again this year, but my daughter—we have only two sons. Phaii! Such is the effect of these low plains. Now in Kulu men are elephants. But I would ask thy Holy One—stand aside, rogue—a charm against most lamentable windy colics that in mango-time overtake my daughter’s eldest. Two years back he gave me a powerful spell.”
“Oh, Holy One!” said Kim, bubbling with mirth at the lama’s rueful face.
“It is true. I gave her one against wind.”
“Teeth—teeth—teeth,” snapped the old woman.
“‘Cure them if they are sick,’” Kim quoted relishingly, ‘“but by no means work charms. Remember what befell the Mahratta.’”