Kim yearned for the caress of soft mud squishing up between the toes, as his mouth watered for mutton stewed with butter and cabbages, for rice speckled with strong scented cardamoms, for the saffron-tinted rice, garlic and onions, and the forbidden greasy sweetmeats of the bazars.

They would feed him raw beef on a platter at the barrack-school, and he must smoke by stealth.
But again, he was a Sahib and was at St Xavier's, and that pig Mahbub Ali ...

No, he would not test Mahbub's hospitality--and yet ...

He thought it out alone in the dormitory, and came to the conclusion he had been unjust to Mahbub.
The school was empty; nearly all the masters had gone away; Colonel Creighton's railway pass lay in his hand, and Kim puffed himself that he had not spent Colonel Creighton's or Mahbub's money in riotous living.

He was still lord of two rupees seven annas.