“There again!” said Maitraya. “The dog! Before you know it he will order the chela to write a part for that knife-swinging savage of yours from Spiti!”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. By Vishnu’s brow, I wouldn’t be surprised at anything!” said Ommony, and cut off further conversation by returning to the trunk and squatting on it with his back to the light, to study the scroll of the saddhu—or rather, to pretend to study it. He was too full of thoughts of the Lama and the chela, and of his own good fortune in having stumbled into their company, to study anything else.
“The Lama knows I’m Cottswold Ommony. He knows I know who he is. Is he using his own method of showing me what he knows I want to see? Or is he keeping an eye on me while he attends to his own secrets? Or am I trapped? Or being tested?”
He had heard of the extraordinary tests to which Lamas put disciples before entrusting them with knowledge.
“But I have never offered to be his disciple!” he reflected. And then he remembered that Lamas always choose their disciples, and that thought made him chuckle. It is notorious they do not choose them for what would pass for erudition according to most standards.
“I’d better see how stupid I can be,” he decided. “I chose Diana without asking her leave,” he remembered. “She likes it all right. Maybe—”
But the thought of becoming an ascetic Lamaist was too much like burlesque to entertain, and he dismissed it—puzzled more than ever.
[29] Holy man.
[30] A verse from the Vedas, any spoken charm or religious formula.