th at the lama's rueful
face.

'It is true. I gave her one against wind.'

'Teeth--teeth--teeth,' snapped the old woman.

"'Cure them if they are sick,"' Kim quoted relishingly, "'but by no
means work charms. Remember what befell the Mahratta."'

'That was two Rains ago; she wearied me with her continual
importunity.' The lama groaned as the Unjust Judge had groaned before
him. 'Thus it comes--take note, my chela--that even those who would
follow the Way are thrust aside by idle women. Three days through,
when the child was sick, she talked to me.'

'Arre! and to whom else should I talk? The boy's mother knew nothing,
and the father--in the nights of the cold weather it was--"Pray to the
Gods," said he, forsooth, and turning over, snored!'

'I gave her the charm. What is an old man to do?'

"'To abstain from action is well--except to acquire merit."'

'Ah chela, if thou desertest me, I am all alone.'

'He found his milk-teeth easily at any rate,' said the old lady. 'But
all priests are alike.'

Kim coughed severely. Being young, he did not approve of her
flippancy. 'To importune the wise out of season is to invite calamity.'

'There is a talking mynah'--the thrust came back with the
well-remembered snap of the jewelled fore-finger--'over the stables
which has picked up the very tone of the family priest. Maybe I forget
honour to my guests, but if ye had seen him double his fists into his
belly, which was like a half-grown gourd, and cry: "Here is the pain!"
ye would forgive. I am half minded to take the hakim's medicine. He
sells it cheap, and certainly it makes him fat as Shiv's own bull. He
does not deny remedies, but I doubted for the child because of the
in-auspicious colour of the bottles.'

The lama, under cover of the monologue, had faded out into the darkness
towards the room prepared.

'Thou hast angered him, belike,' said Kim.

'Not he. He is wearied, and I forgot, being a grandmother. (None but
a grandmother should ever oversee a child. Mothers are only fit for
bearing.) Tomorrow, when he sees how my daughter's son is grown, he
will write the charm. Then, too, he can judge of the new hakim's
drugs.'

'Who is the hakim, Maharanee?'

'A wanderer, as thou art, but a most sober Bengali from Dacca--a master
of medicine. He relieved me of an oppression after meat by means of a
small pill that wrought like a devil unchained. He travels about now,
vending preparations of grea