slid over his hookah with a friendly foot, and Kim pulled at
the good weed. The hangers-on expected grave professional debate, and
perhaps a little free doctoring.

'To discuss medicine before the ignorant is of one piece with teaching
the peacock to sing,' said the hakim.

'True courtesy,' Kim echoed, 'is very often inattention.'

These, be it understood, were company-manners, designed to impress.

'Hi! I have an ulcer on my leg,' cried a scullion. 'Look at it!'

'Get hence! Remove!' said the hakim. 'Is it the habit of the place
to pester honoured guests? Ye crowd in like buffaloes.'

'If the Sahiba knew--' Kim began.

'Ai! Ai! Come away. They are meat for our mistress. When her young
Shaitan's colics are cured perhaps we poor people may be suffered to--'

'The mistress fed thy wife when thou wast in jail for breaking the
money-lender's head. Who speaks against her?' The old servitor curled
his white moustaches savagely in the young moonlight. 'I am
responsible for the honour of this house. Go!' and he drove the
underlings before him.

Said the hakim, hardly more than shaping the words with his lips: 'How
do you do, Mister O'Hara? I am jolly glad to see you again.'

Kim's hand clenched about the pipe-stem. Anywhere on the open road,
perhaps, he would not have been astonished; but here, in this quiet
backwater of life, he was not prepared for Hurree Babu. It annoyed
him, too, that he had been hoodwinked.

'Ah ha! I told you at Lucknow--resurgam--I shall rise again and you
shall not know me. How much did you bet--eh?'

He chewed leisurely upon a few cardamom seeds, but he breathed uneasily.

'But why come here, Babuji?'

'Ah! Thatt is the question, as Shakespeare hath it. I come to
congratulate you on your extraordinary effeecient performance at Delhi.
Oah! I tell you we are all proud of you. It was verree neat and
handy. Our mutual friend, he is old friend of mine. He has been in
some dam'-tight places. Now he will be in some more. He told me; I
tell Mr Lurgan; and he is pleased you graduate so nicely. All the
Department is pleased.'

For the first time in his life, Kim thrilled to the clean pride (it can
be a deadly pitfall, none the less) of Departmental praise--ensnaring
praise from an equal of work appreciated by fellow-workers. Earth has
nothing on the same plane to compare with it. But, cried the Oriental
in him, Babus do not travel far to retail compliments.

'Tel