with the soup. Think you that we who serve Creighton Sahib need
strange scullions to help us through a big dinner?'

'It is a very big dinner,' said Kim, looking at the plates.

'Small wonder. The guest of honour is none other than the Jang-i-
Lat Sahib [the Commander-in-Chief].'

'Ho!' said Kim, with the correct guttural note of wonder. He had
learned what he wanted, and when the scullion turned he was gone.

'And all that trouble,' said he to himself, thinking as usual in
Hindustani, 'for a horse's pedigree! Mahbub Ali should have come
to me to learn a little lying. Every time before that I have
borne a message it concerned a woman. Now it is men. Better. The
tall man said that they will loose a great army to punish someone
- somewhere - the news goes to Pindi and Peshawur. There are also
guns. Would I had crept nearer. It is big news!'

He returned to find the cultivator's cousin's younger brother
discussing the family law-suit in all its bearings with the
cultivator and his wife and a few friends, while the lama dozed.
After the evening meal some one passed him a water-pipe; and Kim
felt very much of a man as he pulled at the smooth coconut-shell,
his legs spread abroad in the moonlight, his tongue clicking in
remarks from time to time. His hosts were most polite; for the
cultivator's wife had told them of his vision of the Red Bull,
and of his probable descent from another world. Moreover, the
lama was a great and venerable curiosity.