ly inclined his head. 'He will not tell anything, if that
is what you are afraid of, Colonel Creighton.'

'It's only a boy, after all.'

'Ye-es; but first, he has nothing to tell; and secondly, he knows what
would happen. Also, he is very fond of Mahbub, and of me a little.'

'Will he draw pay?' demanded the practical horse-dealer.

'Food and water allowance only. Twenty rupees a month.'

One advantage of the Secret Service is that it has no worrying audit.
That Service is ludicrously starved, of course, but the funds are
administered by a few men who do not call for vouchers or present
itemized accounts. Mahbub's eyes lighted with almost a Sikh's love of
money. Even Lurgan's impassive face changed. He considered the years
to come when Kim would have been entered and made to the Great Game
that never ceases day and night, throughout India. He foresaw honour
and credit in the mouths of a chosen few, coming to him from his pupil.
Lurgan Sahib had made E.23 what E.23 was, out of a bewildered,
impertinent, lying, little North-West Province man.

But the joy of these masters was pale and smoky beside the joy of Kim
when St Xavier's Head called him aside, with word that Colonel
Creighton had sent for him.

'I understand, O'Hara, that he has found you a place as an assistant
chain-man in the Canal Department: that comes of taking up
mathematics. It is great luck for you, for you are only sixteen; but
of course you understand that you do not become pukka [permanent] till
you have passed the autumn examination. So you must not think you are
going out into the world to enjoy yourself, or that your fortune is
made. There is a great deal of hard work before you. Only, if you
succeed in becoming pukka, you can rise, you know, to four hundred and
fifty a month.' Whereat the Principal gave him much good advice as to
his conduct, and his manners, and his morals; and others, his elders,
who had not been wafted into billets, talked as only Anglo-Indian lads
can, of favouritism and corruption. Indeed, young Cazalet, whose
father was a pensioner at Chunar, hinted very broadly that Colonel
Creighton's interest in Kim was directly paternal; and Kim, instead of
retaliating, did not even use language. He was thinking of the immense
fun to come, of Mahbub's letter of the day before, all neatly written
in English, making appointment for that afternoon in a house the very
name of which would have crisped the Principal's hair