The lama bowed his head in benediction . ` To fill my cousin 's younger brother 's house with wastrels -- ' the husband began , as he shouldered his heavy bamboo staff . ` Thy cousin 's younger brother owes my father 's cousin something yet on his daughter 's marriage-feast , ' said the woman crisply . ` Let him put their food to that account . The yogi will beg , I doubt not . ' ` Ay , I beg for him , ' said Kim , anxious only to get the lama under shelter for the night , that he might seek Mahbub Ali 's Englishman and deliver himself of the white stallion 's pedigree . ` Now , ' said he , when the lama had come to an anchor in the inner courtyard of a decent Hindu house behind the cantonments , ' I go away for a while -- to -- to buy us victual in the bazar . Do not stray abroad till I return . ' ` Thou wilt return ? Thou wilt surely return ? ' The old man caught at his wrist . ` And thou wilt return in this very same shape ? Is it too late to look tonight for the River ? ' ` Too late and too dark . Be comforted . Think how far thou art on the road -- an hundred miles from Lahore already . ' ` Yea -- and farther from my monastery . Alas ! It is a great and terrible world . ' Kim stole out and away , as unremarkable a figure as ever carried his own and a few score thousand other folk 's fate slung round his neck .
Mahbub Ali 's directions left him little doubt of the house in which his XXXXX lived ; and a groom , bringing a dog-cart home from the Club , made him quite sure .
Ali Englishman Hindu Kim Lahore bamboo bazar lama night wastrels