'If this be doubted, wait till he comes in the morning.

Meantime, a place by the fire.' Followed the usual aimless babble that every low-caste native must raise on every occasion.

It died down, and Kim lay out behind the little knot of Mahbub's followers, almost under the wheels of a horse-truck, a borrowed blanket for covering.

Now a bed among brickbats and ballast-refuse on a damp night, between overcrowded horses and unwashed Baltis, would not appeal to many white boys; but Kim was utterly happy.

Change of scene, service, and surroundings were the breath of his little nostrils, and thinking of the neat white cots of St Xavier's all arow under the punkah gave him joy as keen as the repetition of the multiplication-table in English.
'I am very old,' he thought sleepily.