Nowadays, well-educated natives are of opinion that when their womenfolk travel — and they visit a good deal — it is better to take them quickly by rail in a properly screened compartment; and that custom is spreading.  But there are always those of the old rock who hold by the use of their forefathers; and, above all, there are always the old women — more conservative than the men — who toward the end of their days go on a pilgrimage.  They, being withered and undesirable, do not, under certain circumstances, object to unveiling.  After their long seclusion, during which they have always been in business touch with a thousand outside interests, they love the bustle and stir of the open road, the gatherings at the shrines, and the infinite possibilities of gossip with like-minded dowagers.  Very often it suits a longsuffering family that a strong-tongued, iron-willed old lady should disport herself about India in this fashion; for certainly pilgrimage is grateful to the Gods.  So all about India, in the most remote places, as in the most public, you find some knot of grizzled servitors in nominal charge of an old lady who is more or less curtained and hid away in a bullock-cart.  Such men are staid and discreet, and when a European or a high-caste native is near will net their charge with most elaborate precautions; but in the ordinary haphazard chances of pilgrimage the precautions are not taken.  The old lady is, after all, intensely human, and lives to look upon life.

Kim marked down a gaily ornamented ruth or family bullock-cart, with a broidered canopy of two domes, like a double-humped camel, which had just been drawn into the par.  Eight men made its retinue, and two of the eight were armed with rusty sabres — sure signs that they followed a person of distinction, for the common folk do not bear arms.  An increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, and what to a European would have been bad language, came from behind the curtains.  Here was evidently a woman used to command.

Kim looked over the retinue critically.  Half of them were thin-legged, grey-bearded Ooryas from down country.  The other half were duffle-clad, felt-hatted hillmen of the North; and that mixture told its own tale, even if he had not overheard the incessant sparring between the two divisions.  The old lady was going south on a visit — probably to a rich relative, most probably to a son-in-law, who had sent up an escort as a mark of respect.  The hillmen would be of her own people — Kulu or Kangra folk.  It was quite clear that she was not taking her daughter down to be wedded, or the curtains would have been laced home and the guard would have allowed no one near the car.  A merry and a high-spirited dame, thought Kim, balancing the dung-cake in one hand, the cooked food in the other, and piloting the lama with a nudging shoulder.  Something might be made out of the meeting.  The lama would give him no help, but, as a conscientious chela, Kim was delighted to beg for two.