They found the lama where he had dropped.
“The Search is at an end for me,” shouted Kim in the vernacular. “I have found the Bull, but God knows what comes next. They will not hurt you. Come to the fat priest’s tent with this thin man and see the end. It is all new, and they cannot talk Hindi. They are only uncurried donkeys.”
“Then it is not well to make a jest of their ignorance,” the lama returned. “I am glad if thou art rejoiced, chela.”
Dignified and unsuspicious, he strode into the little tent, saluted the Churches as a Churchman, and sat down by the open charcoal brazier. The yellow lining of the tent reflected in the lamplight made his face red-gold.
Bennett looked at him with the triple-ringed uninterest of the creed that lumps nine-tenths of the world under the title of “heathen”.
“And what was the end of the Search? What gift has the Red Bull brought?” The lama addressed himself to Kim.
“He says, ‘What are you going to do?’” Bennett was staring uneasily at Father Victor, and Kim, for his own ends, took upon himself the office of interpreter.
“I do not see what concern this faquir has with the boy, who is probably his dupe or his confederate,” Bennett began. “We cannot allow an English boy—Assuming that he is the son of a Mason, the sooner he goes to the Masonic Orphanage the better.”
“Ah! That’s your opinion as Secretary to the Regimental Lodge,” said Father Victor; “but we might as well tell the old man what we are going to do. He doesn’t look like a villain.”
“My experience is that one can never fathom the Oriental mind. Now, Kimball, I wish you to tell this man what I say word for word.”