‘I say,’ began the money-lender, pursing his lips, ’that there is not one rule of right living which these te-rains do not cause us to break.  We sit, for example, side by side with all castes and peoples.’

‘Yea, and with most outrageously shameless ones,’ said the wife, scowling at the Amritzar girl making eyes at the young sepoy.

‘I said we might have gone by cart along the road,’ said the husband, ‘and thus have saved some money.’

’Yes — and spent twice over what we saved on food by the way.  That was talked out ten thousand times.’

‘Ay, by ten thousand tongues,’ grunted he.

’The Gods help us poor women if we may not speak.  Oho!  He is of that sort which may not look at or reply to a woman.’  For the lama, constrained by his Rule, took not the faintest notice of her.  ‘And his disciple is like him?’

‘Nay, mother,’ said Kim most promptly.  ’Not when the woman is well-looking and above all charitable to the hungry.’

‘A beggar’s answer,’ said the Sikh, laughing.  ’Thou hast brought it on thyself, sister!’ Kim’s hands were crooked in supplication.

‘And whither goest thou?’ said the woman, handing him the half of a cake from a greasy package.

‘Even to Benares.’

‘Jugglers belike?’ the young soldier suggested.  ’Have ye any tricks to pass the time?  Why does not that yellow man answer?’

‘Because,’ said Kim stoutly, ’he is holy, and thinks upon matters hidden from thee.’

‘That may be well.  We of the Ludhiana Sikhs’ — he rolled it out sonorously -’do not trouble our heads with doctrine.  We fight.’

‘My sister’s brother’s son is naik (corporal] in that regiment,’ said the Sikh craftsman quietly.  ’There are also some Dogra companies there.’  The soldier glared, for a Dogra is of other caste than a Sikh, and the banker tittered.

’They are all one to me, ’ said the Amritzar girl.

‘That we believe,’ snorted the cultivator’s wife malignantly.

’Nay, but all who serve the Sirkar with weapons in their hands are, as it were, one brotherhood.  There is one brotherhood of the caste, but beyond that again’ — she looked round timidly -’the bond of the Pulton — the Regiment — eh?’

‘My brother is in a Jat regiment,’ said the cultivator.  ’Dogras be good men.’

‘Thy Sikhs at least were of that opinion,’ said the soldier, with a scowl at the placid old man in the corner.  ’Thy Sikhs thought so when our two companies came to help them at the Pirzai Kotal in the face of eight Afridi standards on the ridge not three months gone.’

He told the story of a Border action in which the Dogra companies of the Ludhiana Sikhs had acquitted themselves well.  The Amritzar girl smiled; for she knew the talk was to win her approval.

‘Alas!’ said the cultivator’s wife at the end.  ’So their villages were burnt and their little children made homeless?’