‘It is no more than a fever,’ said Kim.  ‘The child is not well fed.’

‘He sickens at everything, and his mother is not here.’

‘If it be permitted, I may cure, Holy One.’

‘What!  Have they made thee a healer?  Wait here,’ said the lama, and he sat down by the Jat upon the lowest step of the temple, while Kim, looking out of the corner of his eyes, slowly opened the little betel-box.  He had dreamed dreams at school of returning to the lama as a Sahib — of chaffing the old man before he revealed himself — boy’s dreams all.  There was more drama in this abstracted, brow-puckered search through the tabloid-bottles, with a pause here and there for thought and a muttered invocation between whiles.  Quinine he had in tablets, and dark brown meat-lozenges — beef most probably, but that was not his business.  The little thing would not eat, but it sucked at a lozenge greedily, and said it liked the salt taste.

‘Take then these six.’  Kim handed them to the man.  ’Praise the Gods, and boil three in milk; other three in water.  After he has drunk the milk give him this’ (it was the half of a quinine pill), ’and wrap him warm.  Give him the water of the other three, and the other half of this white pill when he wakes.  Meantime, here is another brown medicine that he may suck at on the way home.’

‘Gods, what wisdom!’ said the Kamboh, snatching.

It was as much as Kim could remember of his own treatment in a bout of autumn malaria — if you except the patter that he added to impress the lama.

‘Now go!  Come again in the morning.’

‘But the price — the price,’ said the Jat, and threw back his sturdy shoulders.  ’My son is my son.  Now that he will be whole again, how shall I go back to his mother and say I took help by the wayside and did not even give a bowl of curds in return?’

‘They are alike, these Jats,’ said Kim softly.  ’The Jat stood on his dunghill and the King’s elephants went by.  “O driver,” said he, “what will you sell those little donkeys for?"’

The Jat burst into a roar of laughter, stifled with apologies to the lama.  ’It is the saying of my own country the very talk of it.  So are we Jats all.  I will come tomorrow with the child; and the blessing of the Gods of the Homesteads — who are good little Gods — be on you both ...  Now, son, we grow strong again.  Do not spit it out, little Princeling!  King of my Heart, do not spit it out, and we shall be strong men, wrestlers and club-wielders, by morning.’

He moved away, crooning and mumbling.  The lama turned to Kim, and all the loving old soul of him looked out through his narrow eyes.

’To heal the sick is to acquire merit; but first one gets knowledge.  That was wisely done, O Friend of all the World.’

‘I was made wise by thee, Holy One,’ said Kim, forgetting the little play just ended; forgetting St Xavier’s; forgetting his white blood; forgetting even the Great Game as he stooped, Mohammedan-fashion, to touch his master’s feet in the dust of the Jain temple.  ’My teaching I owe to thee.  I have eaten thy bread three years.  My time is finished.  I am loosed from the schools.  I come to thee.’