Many wear the Robe, but few keep the Way.’

‘What is to do now?’ ‘Wait. Let us wait.’

No man could be a fool who knew the language so intimately, who moved so gently and silently, and whose eyes were so different from the dull fat eyes of other Sahibs.

Lurgan Sahib had a hawk’s eye to detect the least flaw in the make-up; and lying on a worn teak-wood couch, would explain by the half-hour together how such and such a caste talked, or walked, or coughed, or spat, or sneezed, and, since ‘hows’ matter little in this world, the ‘why’ of everything.

Trousers and jacket crippled body and mind alike, so he abandoned the project and fell back, Oriental-fashion, on time and chance.

‘Let the Gods order it. I have never pestered Them with prayers. I do not think They will pester me. Look you, I have noticed in my long life that those who eternally break in upon Those Above with complaints and reports and bellowings and weepings are presently sent for in haste, as our Colonel used to send for slack-jawed down-country men who

‘The more one knows about natives the less can one say what they will or won’t do.’

‘That is not well. These men follow desire and come to emptiness. Thou must not be of their sort.’

‘Never speak to a white man till he is fed,’ said Kim, quoting a well-known proverb.