` Now , as regards that woman in the bullock-cart . I think she needs a second son for her daughter . ' ` That is no part of the Way , ' sighed the lama . ` But at least she is from the Hills . Ah , the Hills , and the snow of the Hills ! ' He rose and stalked to the cart . Kim would have given his ears to come too , but the lama did not invite him ; and the few words he caught were in an unknown tongue , for they spoke some common speech of the mountains . The woman seemed to ask questions which the lama turned over in his mind before answering . Now and again he heard the singsong cadence of a Chinese quotation . It was a strange picture that Kim watched between drooped eyelids . The lama , very straight and erect , the deep folds of his yellow clothing slashed with black in the light of the parao fires precisely as a knotted tree-trunk is slashed with the shadows of the low sun , addressed a tinsel and lacquered ruth which burned like a many-coloured jewel in the same uncertain light . The patterns on the gold-worked curtains ran up and down , melting and reforming as the folds shook and quivered to the night wind ; and when the talk grew more earnest the jewelled forefinger snapped out little sparks of light between the embroideries . Behind the cart was a wall of uncertain darkness speckled with little flames and alive with half-caught forms and faces and shadows . The voices of early evening had settled down to one soothing hum whose deepest note was the steady chumping of the bullocks above their chopped straw , and whose highest was the tinkle of a Bengali dancing-girl 's sitar . Most men had eaten and pulled deep at their gurgling , grunting hookahs , which in full blast sound like bull-frogs . At last the lama returned . A hillman walked behind him with a wadded cotton-quilt and spread it carefully by the fire . ` She deserves ten thousand grandchildren , ' thought Kim . ` None the less , but for me , those gifts would not have come . ' ' A virtuous woman -- and a wise one . '
The XXXXX slackened off , joint by joint , like a slow camel .
Chinese Kim bullock-cart chumping cotton-quilt evening fire hookahs lama tree-trunk