‘One — two’ — Lurgan Sahib counted him out up to ten.  Kim shook his head.

‘Hear my count!’ the child burst in, trilling with laughter.  ’First, are two flawed sapphires — one of two ruttees and one of four as I should judge.  The four-ruttee sapphire is chipped at the edge.  There is one Turkestan turquoise, plain with black veins, and there are two inscribed — one with a Name of God in gilt, and the other being cracked across, for it came out of an old ring, I cannot read.  We have now all five blue stones.  Four flawed emeralds there are, but one is drilled in two places, and one is a little carven-’

‘Their weights?’ said Lurgan Sahib impassively.

’Three — five — five — and four ruttees as I judge it.  There is one piece of old greenish pipe amber, and a cut topaz from Europe.  There is one ruby of Burma, of two ruttees, without a flaw, and there is a balas-ruby, flawed, of two ruttees.  There is a carved ivory from China representing a rat sucking an egg; and there is last — ah ha! — a ball of crystal as big as a bean set on a gold leaf.’

He clapped his hands at the close.

‘He is thy master,’ said Lurgan Sahib, smiling.

‘Huh!  He knew the names of the stones,’ said Kim, flushing.  ’Try again!  With common things such as he and I both know.’

They heaped the tray again with odds and ends gathered from the shop, and even the kitchen, and every time the child won, till Kim marvelled.

’Bind my eyes — let me feel once with my fingers, and even then I will leave thee opened-eyed behind,’ he challenged.

Kim stamped with vexation when the lad made his boast good.

‘If it were men — or horses,’ he said, ’I could do better.  This playing with tweezers and knives and scissors is too little.’

‘Learn first — teach later,’ said Lurgan Sahib.  ‘Is he thy master?’

‘Truly.  But how is it done?’

’By doing it many times over till it is done perfectly — for it is worth doing.’

The Hindu boy, in highest feather, actually patted Kim on the back.

‘Do not despair,’ he said.  ‘I myself will teach thee.’

‘And I will see that thou art well taught,’ said Lurgan Sahib, still speaking in the vernacular, ’for except my boy here — it was foolish of him to buy so much white arsenic when, if he had asked, I could have given it — except my boy here I have not in a long time met with one better worth teaching.  And there are ten days more ere thou canst return to Lucknao where they teach nothing — at the long price.  We shall, I think, be friends.’