ith the breakfast. He is almost too jealous to
trust, just now.'

Now a genuine imported Sahib from England would have made a great to-do
over this tale. Lurgan Sahib stated it as simply as Mahbub Ali was
used to record his little affairs in the North.

The back veranda of the shop was built out over the sheer hillside, and
they looked down into their neighbours' chimney-pots, as is the custom
of Simla. But even more than the purely Persian meal cooked by Lurgan
Sahib with his own hands, the shop fascinated Kim. The Lahore Museum
was larger, but here were more wonders--ghost-daggers and prayer-wheels
from Tibet; turquoise and raw amber necklaces; green jade bangles;
curiously packed incense-sticks in jars crusted over with raw garnets;
the devil-masks of overnight and a wall full of peacock-blue draperies;
gilt figures of Buddha, and little portable lacquer altars; Russian
samovars with turquoises on the lid; egg-shell china sets in quaint
octagonal cane boxes; yellow ivory crucifixes--from Japan of all places
in the world, so Lurgan Sahib said; carpets in dusty bales, smelling
atrociously, pushed back behind torn and rotten screens of geometrical
work; Persian water-jugs for the hands after meals; dull copper
incense-burners neither Chinese nor Persian, with friezes of fantastic
devils running round them; tarnished silver belts that knotted like raw
hide; hairpins of jade, ivory, and plasma; arms of all sorts and kinds,
and a thousand other oddments were cased, or piled, or merely thrown
into the room, leaving a clear space only round the rickety deal table,
where Lurgan Sahib worked.

'Those things are nothing,' said his host, following Kim's glance. 'I
buy them because they are pretty, and sometimes I sell--if I like the
buyer's look. My work is on the table--some of it.'

It blazed in the morning light--all red and blue and green flashes,
picked out with the vicious blue-white spurt of a diamond here and
there. Kim opened his eyes.

'Oh, they are quite well, those stones. It will not hurt them to take
the sun. Besides, they are cheap. But with sick stones it is very
different.' He piled Kim's plate anew. 'There is no one but me can
doctor a sick pearl and re-blue turquoises. I grant you opals--any
fool can cure an opal--but for a sick pearl there is only me. Suppose I
were to die! Then there would be no one ... Oh no! You cannot do
anything with jewels. It will be quite enough if you understand