e
curtains and peered out, her veil a third across her face. Her men did
not eye her directly when she addressed them, and thus the proprieties
were more or less observed.

A dark, sallowish District Superintendent of Police, faultlessly
uniformed, an Englishman, trotted by on a tired horse, and, seeing from
her retinue what manner of person she was, chaffed her.

'O mother,' he cried, 'do they do this in the zenanas? Suppose an
Englishman came by and saw that thou hast no nose?'

'What?' she shrilled back. 'Thine own mother has no nose? Why say
so, then, on the open road?'

It was a fair counter. The Englishman threw up his hand with the
gesture of a man hit at sword-play. She laughed and nodded.

'Is this a face to tempt virtue aside?' She withdrew all her veil and
stared at him.

It was by no means lovely, but as the man gathered up his reins he
called it a Moon of Paradise, a Disturber of Integrity, and a few other
fantastic epithets which doubled her up with mirth.

'That is a nut-cut [rogue],' she said. 'All police-constables are
nut-cuts; but the police-wallahs are the worst. Hai, my son, thou hast
never learned all that since thou camest from Belait [Europe]. Who
suckled thee?'

'A pahareen--a hillwoman of Dalhousie, my mother. Keep thy beauty
under a shade--O Dispenser of Delights,' and he was gone.

'These be the sort'--she took a fine judicial tone, and stuffed her
mouth with pan--'These be the sort to oversee justice. They know the
land and the customs of the land. The others, all new from Europe,
suckled by white women and learning our tongues from books, are worse
than the pestilence. They do harm to Kings.' Then she told a long,
long tale to the world at large, of an ignorant young policeman who had
disturbed some small Hill Rajah, a ninth cousin of her own, in the
matter of a trivial land-case, winding up with a quotation from a work
by no means devotional.

Then her mood changed, and she bade one of the escort ask whether the
lama would walk alongside and discuss matters of religion. So Kim
dropped back into the dust and returned to his sugar-cane. For an hour
or more the lama's tam-o'shanter showed like a moon through the haze;
and, from all he heard, Kim gathered that the old woman wept. One of
the Ooryas half apologized for his rudeness overnight, saying that he
had never known his mistress of so bland a temper, and he ascribed it
to the presence of the strange priest. P