t tell his mother. It is
most singular honour! "He that had the belly-pain"--straightway the
Holy One remembered. She will be proud.'

'My chela is to me as is a son to the unenlightened.'

'Say grandson, rather. Mothers have not the wisdom of our years. If a
child cries they say the heavens are falling. Now a grandmother is far
enough separated from the pain of bearing and the pleasure of giving
the breast to consider whether a cry is wickedness pure or the wind.
And since thou speakest once again of wind, when last the Holy One was
here, maybe I offended in pressing for charms.'

'Sister,' said the lama, using that form of address a Buddhist monk may
sometimes employ towards a nun, 'if charms comfort thee--'

'They are better than ten thousand doctors.'

'I say, if they comfort thee, I who was Abbot of Such-zen, will make as
many as thou mayest desire. I have never seen thy face--'

'That even the monkeys who steal our loquats count for again. Hee!
hee!'

'But as he who sleeps there said,'--he nodded at the shut door of the
guest-chamber across the forecourt--'thou hast a heart of gold... And
he is in the spirit my very "grandson" to me.'

'Good! I am the Holy One's cow.' This was pure Hinduism, but the lama
never heeded. 'I am old. I have borne sons in the body. Oh, once I
could please men! Now I can cure them.' He heard her armlets tinkle
as though she bared arms for action. 'I will take over the boy and
dose him, and stuff him, and make him all whole. Hai! hai! We old
people know something yet.'

Wherefore when Kim, aching in every bone, opened his eyes, and would go
to the cook-house to get his master's food, he found strong coercion
about him, and a veiled old figure at the door, flanked by the grizzled
manservant, who told him very precisely the things that he was on no
account to do.

'Thou must have? Thou shalt have nothing. What? A locked box in
which to keep holy books? Oh, that is another matter. Heavens forbid
I should come between a priest and his prayers! It shall be brought,
and thou shalt keep the key.'

They pushed the coffer under his cot, and Kim shut away Mahbub's
pistol, the oilskin packet of letters, and the locked books and
diaries, with a groan of relief. For some absurd reason their weight
on his shoulders was nothing to their weight on his poor mind. His
neck ached under it of nights.

'Thine is a sickness uncommon in youth these days: since young fol