Some were fixed, others belonged to the 'rickshaws of the careless, open-spoken English folk, going out to dinner.
'It is here,' said Kim's guide, and halted in a veranda flush with the main road.

No door stayed them, but a curtain of beaded reeds that split up the lamplight beyond.
'He is come,' said the boy, in a voice little louder than a sigh, and vanished.

Kim felt sure that the boy had been posted to guide him from the first, but, putting a bold face on it, parted the curtain.

A black-bearded man, with a green shade over his eyes, sat at a table, and, one by one, with short, white hands, picked up globules of light from a tray before him, threaded them on a glancing silken string, and hummed to himself the while.

Kim was conscious that beyond the circle of light the room was full of things that smelt like all the temples of all the East.