'Take thou the purse.'

The lama, not so well used to trains as he had pretended, started
as the 3.25 a.m. south-bound roared in. The sleepers sprang to
life, and the station filled with clamour and shoutings, cries of
water and sweetmeat vendors, shouts of native policemen, and
shrill yells of women gathering up their baskets, their families,
and their husbands.

'It is the train - only the te-rain. It will not come here.
Wait!' Amazed at the lama's immense simplicity (he had handed
him a small bag full of rupees), Kim asked and paid for a ticket
to Umballa. A sleepy clerk grunted and flung out a ticket to the
next station, just six miles distant.

'Nay,' said Kim, scanning it with a grin. 'This may serve for
farmers, but I live in the city of Lahore. It was cleverly done,
Babu. Now give the ticket to Umballa.'

The Babu scowled and dealt the proper ticket.

'Now another to Amritzar,' said Kim, who had no notion of
spending Mahbub Ali's money on anything so crude as a paid ride
to Umballa. 'The price is so much. The small money in return is
just so much. I know the ways of the te-rain ... Never did yogi
need chela as thou dost,' he went on merrily to the bewildered
lama. 'They would have flung thee out at Mian Mir but for me.
This way! Come!' He returned the money, keeping only one anna in
each rupee of the price of the Umballa ticket as his commission -
the immemorial commission of Asia.