A Hindu child , some ten years old , squatted under a lamp-post . ` Where is Mr Lurgan 's house ? ' demanded Kim . ' I do not understand English , ' was the answer , and Kim shifted his speech accordingly . ' I will show . ' Together they set off through the mysterious dusk , full of the noises of a city below the hillside , and the breath of a cool wind in deodar-crowned Jakko , shouldering the stars . The house-lights , scattered on every level , made , as it were , a double firmament . 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 . A whiff of musk , a puff of sandal-wood , and a breath of sickly jessamine-oil caught his opened nostrils . ' I am here , ' said Kim at last , speaking in the vernacular : the smells made him forget that he was to be a Sahib . ` Seventy-nine , eighty , eighty-one , ' the man counted to himself , stringing pearl after pearl so quickly that Kim could scarcely follow his fingers . He slid off the green shade and looked fixedly at Kim for a full half-minute . The pupils of the eye dilated and closed to pin-pricks , as if at will . There was a fakir by the Taksali Gate who had just this gift and made money by it , especially when cursing silly women .
XXXXX stared with interest .
English Gate Kim half-minute house-lights musk pin-pricks reeds rickshaws sandal-wood