He tried to think of the lama -- to wonder why he had tumbled into a brook -- but the bigness of the world , seen between the forecourt gates , swept linked thought aside . Then he looked upon the trees and the broad fields , with the thatched huts hidden among crops -- looked with strange eyes unable to take up the size and proportion and use of things -- stared for a still half-hour . All that while he felt , though he could not put it into words , that his soul was out of gear with its surroundings -- a cog-wheel unconnected with any machinery , just like the idle cog-wheel of a cheap Beheea sugar-crusher laid by in a corner . The breezes fanned over him , the parrots shrieked at him , the noises of the populated house behind -- squabbles , orders , and reproofs -- hit on dead ears . ' I am Kim . I am Kim . And what is Kim ? ' His soul repeated it again and again . He did not want to cry -- had never felt less like crying in his life -- but of a sudden easy , stupid tears trickled down his nose , and with an almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on the world without . Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an instant before slid into proper proportion . Roads were meant to be walked upon , houses to be lived in , cattle to be driven , fields to be tilled , and men and women to be talked to . They were all real and true -- solidly planted upon the feet -- perfectly comprehensible -- clay of his clay , neither more nor less . He shook himself like a dog with a flea in his ear , and rambled out of the gate . Said the Sahiba , to whom watchful eyes reported this move : ` Let him go . I have done my share . Mother Earth must do the rest . When the Holy One comes back from meditation , tell him . ' There stood an empty bullock-cart on a little knoll half a mile away , with a young banyan tree behind -- a look-out , as it were , above some new-ploughed levels ; and his eyelids , bathed in soft air , grew heavy as he neared it . The ground was good clean dust -- no new herbage that , living , is half-way to death already , but the hopeful dust that holds the seeds of all life . He felt it between his toes , patted it with his palms , and joint by joint , sighing luxuriously , laid him down full length along in the shadow of the wooden-pinned cart .
And Mother Earth was as faithful as the XXXXX .
Kim Mother Sahiba banyan bigness bullock-cart cog-wheel forecourt herbage look-out