Kim's hand clenched about the pipe-stem. Anywhere on the open road, perhaps, he would not have been astonished; but here, in this quiet backwater of life, he was not prepared for Hurree Babu. It annoyed him, too, that he had been hoodwinked.
'Ah ha! I told you at Lucknow—resurgam—I shall rise again and you shall not know me. How much did you bet—eh?'
He was hardly more than shaping the English words with his lips.
'But why come here, Babuji?'
Ah! Thatt is the question, as Shakespeare hath said. I come to congratulate you on your extraordinary effeecient performance at Delhi. Oah! I tell you we are all proud of you. It was verree neat and handy. Our mutual friend, he is old friend of mine. He has been in some damn-tight places. Now he will be in some more. He told me, I tell Mr. Lurgan, and he is pleased you graduate so nicely. All the Department is pleased.'
For the first time in his life, Kim thrilled to the clean pride (it can be a deadly pitfall, none the less) of Departmental praise ensnaring praise—from an equal for work appreciated by a fellow-worker. Earth has nothing on the same plane to compare with it. But, said the Oriental in him, Babus do not travel about to retail compliments.
'Tell the tale, Babu,' he said authoritatively.
'Oah, it is nothing. Onlee I was at Simla when the wire came in about what our mutual friend said he had hidden, and old Creighton' He looked to see how Kim would take this piece of audacity.
'The Colonel Sahib,' the boy from St. Xavier's corrected.
'Of course. He found me at a loose string, and I had to go down to Chitor to find that beastly letter. I do not like the South—
