Shaitan that I have ever known to take up a poor girl's time with
this play, and then to say: "Is not the jest enough?" Thou wilt go
very far in this world.' She gave the dancing-girls' salutation in
mockery.

'All one. Make haste and rough-cut my head.' Kim shifted from foot
to foot, his eyes ablaze with mirth as he thought of the fat days
before him. He gave the girl four annas, and ran down the stairs in
the likeness of a low-caste Hindu boy - perfect in every detail. A
cookshop was his next point of call, where he feasted in
extravagance and greasy luxury.

On Lucknow station platform he watched young De Castro, all covered
with prickly-heat, get into a second-class compartment. Kim
patronized a third, and was the life and soul of it. He explained
to the company that he was assistant to a juggler who had left him
behind sick with fever, and that he would pick up his master at
Umballa. As the occupants of the carriage changed, he varied this
tale, or adorned it with all the shoots of a budding fancy, the
more rampant for being held off native speech so long. In all India
that night was no human being so joyful as Kim. At Umballa he got
out and headed eastward, plashing over the sodden fields to the
village where the old soldier lived.

About this time Colonel Creighton at Simla was advised from Lucknow
by wire that young O'Hara had disappeared. Mahbub Ali was in town
selling horses, and to him the Colonel confided the affair one
morning cantering round Annandale racecourse.

'Oh, that is nothing,' said the horse-dealer. 'Men are like horses.