` Now let us walk , ' muttered the lama , and to the click of his rosary they walked in silence mile upon mile . The lama as usual , was deep in meditation , but Kim 's bright eyes were open wide . This broad , smiling river of life , he considered , was a vast improvement on the cramped and crowded Lahore streets . There were new people and new sights at every stride -- castes he knew and castes that were altogether out of his experience . They met a troop of long-haired , strong-scented Sansis with baskets of lizards and other unclean food on their backs , their lean dogs sniffing at their heels . These people kept their own side of the road ' , moving at a quick , furtive jog-trot , and all other castes gave them ample room ; for the Sansi is deep pollution . Behind them , walking wide and stiffly across the strong shadows , the memory of his leg-irons still on him , strode one newly released from the jail ; his full stomach and shiny skin to prove that the Government fed its prisoners better than most honest men could feed themselves . Kim knew that walk well , and made broad jest of it as they passed . Then an Akali , a wild-eyed , wild-haired Sikh devotee in the blue-checked clothes of his faith , with polished-steel quoits glistening on the cone of his tall blue turban , stalked past , returning from a visit to one of the independent Sikh States , where he had been singing the ancient glories of the Khalsa to College-trained princelings in top-boots and white-cord breeches . Kim was careful not to irritate that man ; for the Akali 's temper is short and his arm quick . Here and there they met or were overtaken by the gaily dressed crowds of whole villages turning out to some local fair ; the women , with their babes on their hips , walking behind the men , the older boys prancing on sticks of sugar-cane , dragging rude brass models of locomotives such as they sell for a halfpenny , or flashing the sun into the eyes of their betters from cheap toy mirrors . One could see at a glance what each had bought ; and if there were any doubt it needed only to watch the wives comparing , brown arm against brown arm , the newly purchased dull glass bracelets that come from the North-West . These merry-makers stepped slowly , calling one to the other and stopping to haggle with sweetmeat-sellers , or to make a prayer before one of the wayside shrines -- sometimes Hindu , sometimes Mussalman -- which the low-caste of both creeds share with beautiful impartiality . A solid line of blue , rising and falling like the back of a caterpillar in haste , would swing up through the quivering dust and trot past to a chorus of quick cackling . That was a gang of changars -- the women who have taken all the embankments of all the Northern railways under their charge -- a flat-footed , big-bosomed , strong-limbed , blue-petticoated clan of earth-carriers , hurrying north on news of a job , and wasting no time by the road . They belong to the caste whose men do not count , and they walked with squared elbows , swinging hips , and heads on high , as suits women who carry heavy weights . A little later a marriage procession would strike into the Grand Trunk with music and shoutings , and a smell of marigold and jasmine stronger even than the reek of the dust . One could see the bride 's litter , a blur of red and tinsel , staggering through the haze , while the bridegroom 's bewreathed pony turned aside to snatch a mouthful from a passing fodder-cart . Then Kim would join the Kentish-fire of good wishes and bad jokes , wishing the couple a hundred sons and no daughters , as the saying is . Still more interesting and more to be shouted over it was when a strolling juggler with some half-trained monkeys , or a panting , feeble bear , or a woman who tied goats ' horns to her feet , and with these danced on a slack-rope , set the horses to shying and the women to shrill , long-drawn quavers of amazement .
The XXXXX never raised his eyes .
Kim Mussalman Sansi betters jasmine lama low-caste marigold quavers slack-rope