They strolled on by the easiest of stages, halting every few hours at a wayside shelter.

Very many Sahibs travel along the Kalka road; and, as Mahbub Ali says, every young Sahib must needs esteem himself a judge of a horse, and, though he be over head in debt to the money-lender, must make as if to buy.

That was the reason that Sahib after Sahib, rolling along in a stage-carriage, would stop and open talk.

Some would even descend from their vehicles and feel the horses' legs; asking inane questions, or, through sheer ignorance of the vernacular, grossly insulting the imperturbable trader.
'When first I dealt with Sahibs, and that was when Colonel Soady Sahib was Governor of Fort Abazai and flooded the Commissioner's camping-ground for spite,' Mahbub confided to Kim as the boy filled his pipe under a tree, 'I did not know how greatly they were fools, and this made me wroth.

As thus--,' and he told Kim a tale of an expression, misused in all innocence, that doubled Kim up with mirth.
'Now I see, however,'-- he exhaled smoke slowly--'that it is with them as with all men--in certain matters they are wise, and in others most foolish.