‘I don’t,’ said Creighton briefly.  He had paid Hurree’s travelling expenses, out of a most lively curiosity to learn what the lama might be.

’And he applies to the lama for information on lamaism, and devil-dances, and spells and charms, several times in these few years.  Holy Virgin!  I could have told him all that yeears ago.  I think Hurree Babu is getting too old for the Road.  He likes better to collect manners and customs information.  Yes, he wants to be an FRS.

‘Hurree thinks well of the boy, doesn’t he?’

’Oh, very indeed — we have had some pleasant evenings at my little place — but I think it would be waste to throw him away with Hurree on the Ethnological side.’

’Not for a first experience.  How does that strike you, Mahbub?  Let the boy run with the lama for six months.  After that we can see.  He will get experience.’

’He has it already, Sahib — as a fish controls the water he swims in.  But for every reason it will be well to loose him from the school.’

‘Very good, then,’ said Creighton, half to himself.  ’He can go with the lama, and if Hurree Babu cares to keep an eye on them so much the better.  He won’t lead the boy into any danger as Mahbub would.  Curious — his wish to be an F R S. Very human, too.  He is best on the Ethnological side — Hurree.’

No money and no preferment would have drawn Creighton from his work on the Indian Survey, but deep in his heart also lay the ambition to write ‘F R S’ after his name.  Honours of a sort he knew could be obtained by ingenuity and the help of friends, but, to the best of his belief, nothing save work — papers representing a life of it — took a man into the Society which he had bombarded for years with monographs on strange Asiatic cults and unknown customs.  Nine men out of ten would flee from a Royal Society soiree in extremity of boredom; but Creighton was the tenth, and at times his soul yearned for the crowded rooms in easy London where silver-haired, bald-headed gentlemen who know nothing of the Army move among spectroscopic experiments, the lesser plants of the frozen tundras, electric flight-measuring machines, and apparatus for slicing into fractional millimetres the left eye of the female mosquito.  By all right and reason, it was the Royal Geographical that should have appealed to him, but men are as chancy as children in their choice of playthings.  So Creighton smiled, and thought the better of Hurree Babu, moved by like desire.

He dropped the ghost-dagger and looked up at Mahbub.

‘How soon can we get the colt from the stable?’ said the horse-dealer, reading his eyes.

’Hmm!  If I withdraw him by order now — what will he do, think you?  I have never before assisted at the teaching of such an one.’

‘He will come to me,’ said Mahbub promptly.  ’Lurgan Sahib and I will prepare him for the Road.’

’So be it, then.  For six months he shall run at his choice.  But who will be his sponsor?’