“Give him time. Maybe he’s fond of the lad,” said Father Victor, half arresting the clergyman’s motion.
The lama dragged forth his rosary and pulled his huge hat-brim over his eyes.
“What can he want now?”
“He says”—Kim put up one hand. “He says: ‘Be quiet.’ He wants to speak to me by himself. You see, you do not know one little word of what he says, and I think if you talk he will perhaps give you very bad curses. When he takes those beads like that, you see, he always wants to be quiet.”
The two Englishmen sat overwhelmed, but there was a look in Bennett’s eye that promised ill for Kim when he should be relaxed to the religious arm.
“A Sahib and the son of a Sahib—” The lama’s voice was harsh with pain. “But no white man knows the land and the customs of the land as thou knowest. How comes it this is true?”
“What matter, Holy One?—but remember it is only for a night or two. Remember, I can change swiftly. It will all be as it was when I first spoke to thee under Zam-Zammah the great gun—”
“As a boy in the dress of white men—when I first went to the Wonder House. And a second time thou wast a Hindu. What shall the third incarnation be?” He chuckled drearily. “Ah, chela, thou has done a wrong to an old man because my heart went out to thee.”
“And mine to thee. But how could I know that the Red Bull would bring me to this business?”
The lama covered his face afresh, and nervously rattled the rosary. Kim squatted beside him and laid hold upon a fold of his clothing.