“The priest’s son knows the names of his nurse and three Gods. Says he: ‘Hear me, or I will curse you by the three million Great Ones.’” Decidedly this invisible had an arrow or two in his quiver. He went on: “I am but a teacher of the alphabet. I have learned all the wisdom of the Sahibs.”
“The Sahibs never grow old. They dance and they play like children when they are grandfathers. A strong-backed breed,” piped the voice inside the palanquin.
“I have, too, our drugs which loosen humours of the head in hot and angry men. Siná well compounded when the moon stands in the proper House; yellow earths I have—arplan from China that makes a man renew his youth and astonish his household; saffron from Kashmir, and the best salep of Kabul. Many people have died before—”
“That I surely believe,” said Kim.
“They knew the value of my drugs. I do not give my sick the mere ink in which a charm is written, but hot and rending drugs which descend and wrestle with the evil.”
“Very mightily they do so,” sighed the old lady.
The voice launched into an immense tale of misfortune and bankruptcy, studded with plentiful petitions to the Government. “But for my fate, which overrules all, I had been now in Government employ. I bear a degree from the great school at Calcutta—whither, maybe, the son of this House shall go.”
“He shall indeed. If our neighbour’s brat can in a few years be made an F A” (First Arts—she used the English word, of which she had heard so often), “how much more shall children clever as some that I know bear away prizes at rich Calcutta.”
“Never,” said the voice, “have I seen such a child! Born in an auspicious hour, and—but for that colic which, alas! turning into black cholers, may carry him off like a pigeon—destined to many years, he is enviable.”
“Hai mai!” said the old lady. “To praise children is inauspicious, or I could listen to this talk. But the back of the house is unguarded, and even in this soft air men think themselves to be men, and women we know ... The child’s father is away too, and I must be chowkedar (watchman) in my old age. Up! Up! Take up the palanquin. Let the hakim and the young priest settle between them whether charms or medicine most avail. Ho! worthless people, fetch tobacco for the guests, and—round the homestead go I!”