` Bind my eyes -- let me feel once with my fingers , and even then I will leave thee opened-eyed behind , ' he challenged . Kim stamped with vexation when the lad made his boast good . ` If it were men -- or horses , ' he said , ' I could do better . This playing with tweezers and knives and scissors is too little . ' ` Learn first -- teach later , ' said Lurgan Sahib . ` Is he thy master ? ' ` Truly . But how is it done ? ' ` By doing it many times over till it is done perfectly -- for it is worth doing . ' The Hindu boy , in highest feather , actually patted Kim on the back . ` Do not despair , ' he said . ' I myself will teach thee . ' ` And I will see that thou art well taught , ' said Lurgan Sahib , still speaking in the vernacular , ` for except my boy here -- it was foolish of him to buy so much white arsenic when , if he had asked , I could have given it -- except my boy here I have not in a long time met with one better worth teaching . And there are ten days more ere thou canst return to Lucknao where they teach nothing -- at the long price . We shall , I think , be friends . ' They were a most mad ten days , but Kim enjoyed himself too much to reflect on their craziness . In the morning they played the Jewel Game -- sometimes with veritable stones , sometimes with piles of swords and daggers , sometimes with photo-graphs of natives . Through the afternoons he and the Hindu boy would mount guard in the shop , sitting dumb behind a carpet-bale or a screen and watching Mr Lurgan 's many and very curious visitors . There were small Rajahs , escorts coughing in the veranda , who came to buy curiosities -- such as phonographs and mechanical toys . There were ladies in search of necklaces , and men , it seemed to Kim -- but his mind may have been vitiated by early training -- in search of the ladies ; natives from independent and feudatory Courts whose ostensible business was the repair of broken necklaces -- rivers of light poured out upon the table -- but whose true end seemed to be to raise money for angry Maharanees or young Rajahs .
There were Babus to whom Lurgan XXXXX talked with austerity and authority , but at the end of each interview he gave them money in coined silver and currency notes .
Hindu Lucknao Lurgan Sahib carpet-bale curiosities daggers days independent photo-graphs