CHAPTER VII
Unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised
With idiot moons and stars retracting stars?
Creep thou betweene—thy coming's all unnoised.
Heaven hath her high as earth her baser wars.
Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fraye
(By Adam's fathers' own sin bound alway);
Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say
Which planet mends thy threadbare fate or mars!
In the afternoon the red-faced schoolmaster told Kim that he had been 'struck off the strength,' which conveyed no meaning to him till he was ordered to go away and play. Then he ran to the bazar, and found the young letter-writer to whom he owed a stamp.
'Now I pay,' said Kim royally, 'and now I want another letter to be written.'
'Mahbub Ali is in Umballa,' said the writer jauntily. He was, by virtue of his office, a bureau of general misinformation.
'This is not to Mahbub, but to a priest. Take thy pen and write quickly. To Teshoo Lama, the holy one from Bhotiyal seeking for a River, who is now in the Temple of the Tirthankers at Benares. Take more ink. In three days I am to go down to Nucklao to the school at Nucklao. The name of the school is Xavier. I do not know where that school is, but it is at Nucklao.'
'But I know Nucklao,' the writer interrupted. 'I know the school.'
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