'Noah! Noah! I onlee speak a little. What shall we do now?'
'The bugles'ill go for dinner in arf a minute. My Gawd! I wish I'd gone up to the front with the regiment. It's awful doin' nothin' but school down 'ere. Don't you 'ate it?'
'Oah yess!'
'I'd run away if I knew where to go to, but, as the men say, in this bloomin' Injia you're only a prisoner at large. You can't desert without bein' took back at once. I'm fair sick of it.'
'You have been in Be—England?'
'W'y, I only come out last troopin' season with my mother. I should think I 'ave been in England. What an ignorant little beggar you are. You was brought up in the gutter, wasn't you?'
'Oah yess. Tell me something about England. My father he did come from there.'
Though he would not say so, Kim of course disbelieved every word the drummer-boy spoke about the Liverpool suburb which was his England. It passed the heavy time till dinner—a most unappetizing meal served to the boys and a few invalids in a corner of a barrack-room. But that he had written to Mahbub Ali, Kim would have been almost depressed. The indifference of native crowds he was used to; but this loneliness among white men preyed on him. He was grateful when, in the course of the afternoon, a big soldier took him over to Father Victor, who lived in another wing across another dusty parade-ground. The priest was lying in a chair reading a letter written in purple ink. He looked at Kim more curiously than ever.
'An' how do you like it, my son, as far as you've gone? Not much eh? It must be hard—very hard on a wild animal. Listen now. I've an amazin' letter from your friend.'
