’A lethargy that comes by right some few score years later.  But it is done now.’

‘Maharanee,’ Kim began, but led by the look in her eye, changed it to the title of plain love — ’Mother, I owe my life to thee.  How shall I make thanks?  Ten thousand blessings upon thy house and -’

‘The house be unblessed!’ (It is impossible to give exactly the old lady’s word.) ’Thank the Gods as a priest if thou wilt, but thank me, if thou carest, as a son.  Heavens above!  Have I shifted thee and lifted thee and slapped and twisted thy ten toes to find texts flung at my head?  Somewhere a mother must have borne thee to break her heart.  What used thou to her — son?’

‘I had no mother, my mother,’ said Kim.  ’She died, they tell me, when I was young.’

’Hai mai!  Then none can say I have robbed her of any right if — when thou takest the road again and this house is but one of a thousand used for shelter and forgotten, after an easy-flung blessing.  No matter.  I need no blessings, but — but -’ She stamped her foot at the poor relation.  ’Take up the trays to the house.  What is the good of stale food in the room, O woman of ill-omen?’

‘I ha — have borne a son in my time too, but he died,’ whimpered the bowed sister-figure behind the chudder.  ’Thou knowest he died!  I only waited for the order to take away the tray.’

‘It is I that am the woman of ill-omen,’ cried the old lady penitently.  ’We that go down to the chattris [the big umbrellas above the burning-ghats where the priests take their last dues] clutch hard at the bearers of the chattis [water-jars — young folk full of the pride of life, she meant; but the pun is clumsy].  When one cannot dance in the festival one must e’en look out of the window, and grandmothering takes all a woman’s time.  Thy master gives me all the charms I now desire for my daughter’s eldest, by reason — is it? — that he is wholly free from sin.  The hakim is brought very low these days.  He goes about poisoning my servants for lack of their betters.’

‘What hakim, mother?’

’That very Dacca man who gave me the pill which rent me in three pieces.  He cast up like a strayed camel a week ago, vowing that he and thou had been blood-brothers together up Kulu-way, and feigning great anxiety for thy health.  He was very thin and hungry, so I gave orders to have him stuffed too — him and his anxiety!’

‘I would see him if he is here.’

’He eats five times a day, and lances boils for my hinds to save himself from an apoplexy.  He is so full of anxiety for thy health that he sticks to the cook-house door and stays himself with scraps.  He will keep.  We shall never get rid of him.’

‘Send him here, mother’ — the twinkle returned to Kim’s eye for a flash — ‘and I will try.’

’I’ll send him, but to chase him off is an ill turn.  At least he had the sense to fish the Holy One out of the brook; thus, as the Holy One did not say, acquiring merit.’