mple man needs.

His wants were few, because, since the lama had no caste scruples,
cooked food from the nearest stall would serve; but, for luxury's sake,
Kim bought a handful of dung-cakes to build a fire. All about, coming
and going round the little flames, men cried for oil, or grain, or
sweetmeats, or tobacco, jostling one another while they waited their
turn at the well; and under the men's voices you heard from halted,
shuttered carts the high squeals and giggles of women whose faces
should not be seen in public.

Nowadays, well-educated natives are of opinion that when their
womenfolk travel--and they visit a good deal--it is better to take them
quickly by rail in a properly screened compartment; and that custom is
spreading. But there are always those of the old rock who hold by the
use of their forefathers; and, above all, there are always the old
women--more conservative than the men--who toward the end of their days
go on a pilgrimage. They, being withered and undesirable, do not,
under certain circumstances, object to unveiling. After their long
seclusion, during which they have always been in business touch with a
thousand outside interests, they love the bustle and stir of the open
road, the gatherings at the shrines, and the infinite possibilities of
gossip with like-minded dowagers. Very often it suits a longsuffering
family that a strong-tongued, iron-willed old lady should disport
herself about India in this fashion; for certainly pilgrimage is
grateful to the Gods. So all about India, in the most remote places,
as in the most public, you find some knot of grizzled servitors in
nominal charge of an old lady who is more or less curtained and hid
away in a bullock-cart. Such men are staid and discreet, and when a
European or a high-caste native is near will net their charge with most
elaborate precautions; but in the ordinary haphazard chances of
pilgrimage the precautions are not taken. The old lady is, after all,
intensely human, and lives to look upon life.

Kim marked down a gaily ornamented ruth or family bullock-cart, with a
broidered canopy of two domes, like a double-humped camel, which had
just been drawn into the par. Eight men made its retinue, and two of
the eight were armed with rusty sabres--sure signs that they followed a
person of distinction, for the common folk do not bear arms. An
increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, and what to a
European would have been b