This did not impress Kim as much as the knowledge that his raiment would tire him out if he tried to run. He slouched to the tree at the corner of a bare road leading towards the bazar, and eyed the natives passing. Most of them were barrack-servants of the lowest caste. Kim hailed a sweeper, who promptly retorted with a piece of unnecessary insolence, in the natural belief that the European boy could not follow it. The low, quick answer undeceived him. Kim put his fettered soul into it, thankful for the late chance to abuse somebody in the tongue he knew best. “And now, go to the nearest letter-writer in the bazar and tell him to come here. I would write a letter.”
“But—but what manner of white man’s son art thou to need a bazar letter-writer? Is there not a schoolmaster in the barracks?”
“Ay; and Hell is full of the same sort. Do my order, you—you Od! Thy mother was married under a basket! Servant of Lal Beg” (Kim knew the God of the sweepers), “run on my business or we will talk again.”
The sweeper shuffled off in haste. “There is a white boy by the barracks waiting under a tree who is not a white boy,” he stammered to the first bazar letter-writer he came across. “He needs thee.”
“Will he pay?” said the spruce scribe, gathering up his desk and pens and sealing-wax all in order.
“I do not know. He is not like other boys. Go and see. It is well worth.”
Kim danced with impatience when the slim young Kayeth hove in sight. As soon as his voice could carry he cursed him volubly.
“First I will take my pay,” the letter-writer said. “Bad words have made the price higher. But who art thou, dressed in that fashion, to speak in this fashion?”
“Aha! That is in the letter which thou shalt write. Never was such a tale. But I am in no haste. Another writer will serve me. Umballa city is as full of them as is Lahore.”
“Four annas,” said the writer, sitting down and spreading his cloth in the shade of a deserted barrack-wing.