‘There is a talking mynah’ — the thrust came back with the well-remembered snap of the jewelled fore-finger — ’over the stables which has picked up the very tone of the family priest.  Maybe I forget honour to my guests, but if ye had seen him double his fists into his belly, which was like a half-grown gourd, and cry:  “Here is the pain!” ye would forgive.  I am half minded to take the hakim’s medicine.  He sells it cheap, and certainly it makes him fat as Shiv’s own bull.  He does not deny remedies, but I doubted for the child because of the in-auspicious colour of the bottles.’

The lama, under cover of the monologue, had faded out into the darkness towards the room prepared.

‘Thou hast angered him, belike,’ said Kim.

’Not he.  He is wearied, and I forgot, being a grandmother. (None but a grandmother should ever oversee a child.  Mothers are only fit for bearing.) Tomorrow, when he sees how my daughter’s son is grown, he will write the charm.  Then, too, he can judge of the new hakim’s drugs.’

‘Who is the hakim, Maharanee?’

’A wanderer, as thou art, but a most sober Bengali from Dacca — a master of medicine.  He relieved me of an oppression after meat by means of a small pill that wrought like a devil unchained.  He travels about now, vending preparations of great value.  He has even papers, printed in Angrezi, telling what things he has done for weak-backed men and slack women.  He has been here four days; but hearing ye were coming (hakims and priests are snake and tiger the world over) he has, as I take it, gone to cover.’

While she drew breath after this volley, the ancient servant, sitting unrebuked on the edge of the torchlight, muttered:  ’This house is a cattle-pound, as it were, for all charlatans and — priests.  Let the boy stop eating mangoes ... but who can argue with a grandmother?’ He raised his voice respectfully:  ’Sahiba, the hakim sleeps after his meat.  He is in the quarters behind the dovecote.’

Kim bristled like an expectant terrier.  To outface and down-talk a Calcutta-taught Bengali, a voluble Dacca drug-vendor, would be a good game.  It was not seemly that the lama, and incidentally himself, should be thrown aside for such an one.  He knew those curious bastard English advertisements at the backs of native newspapers.  St Xavier’s boys sometimes brought them in by stealth to snigger over among their mates; for the language of the grateful patient recounting his symptoms is most simple and revealing.  The Oorya, not unanxious to play off one parasite against the other, slunk away towards the dovecote.

‘Yes,’ said Kim, with measured scorn.  ’Their stock-in-trade is a little coloured water and a very great shamelessness.  Their prey are broken-down kings and overfed Bengalis.  Their profit is in children - who are not born.’  The old lady chuckled.  ’Do not be envious.  Charms are better, eh?  I never gainsaid it.  See that thy Holy One writes me a good amulet by the morning.’