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 Sahib talked with austerity and authority, but at the end of each interview he gave them money in coined silver and currency notes.

There were occasional gatherings of long-coated theatrical natives who discussed metaphysics in English and Bengali, to Mr Lurgan's great edification.