“And I remember,” he quoted maliciously, “one who said, ‘Trust a snake before an harlot, and an harlot before a Pathan, Mahbub Ali.’ Now, excepting as to Pathans, of whom I am one, all that is true. Most true is it in the Great Game, for it is by means of women that all plans come to ruin and we lie out in the dawning with our throats cut. So it happened to such a one.” He gave the reddest particulars. “Then why—?” Kim paused before a filthy staircase that climbed to the warm darkness of an upper chamber, in the ward that is behind Azim Ullah’s tobacco-shop. Those who know it call it The Birdcage—it is so full of whisperings and whistlings and chirrupings. The room, with its dirty cushions and half-smoked hookahs, smelt abominably of stale tobacco. In one corner lay a huge and shapeless woman clad in greenish gauzes, and decked, brow, nose, ear, neck, wrist, arm, waist, and ankle with heavy native jewellery. When she turned it was like the clashing of copper pots. A lean cat in the balcony outside the window mewed hungrily. Kim checked, bewildered, at the door-curtain. “Is that the new stuff, Mahbub?” said Huneefa lazily, scarce troubling to remove the mouthpiece from her lips. “O Buktanoos!”—like most of her kind, she swore by the Djinns—“O Buktanoos! He is very good to look upon.” “That is part of the selling of the horse,” Mahbub explained to Kim, who laughed. “I have heard that talk since my Sixth Day,” he replied, squatting by the light. “Whither does it lead?” “To protection. Tonight we change thy colour. This sleeping under roofs has blanched thee like an almond. But Huneefa has the secret of a colour that catches. No painting of a day or two. Also, we fortify thee against the chances of the Road. That is _my_ gift to thee, my son. Take out all metals on thee and lay them here. Make ready, Huneefa.” Kim dragged forth his compass, Survey paint-box, and the new-filled medicine-box. They had all accompanied his travels, and boylike he valued them immensely. The woman rose slowly and moved with her hands a little spread before her. Then Kim saw that she was blind. “No, no,” she muttered, “the Pathan speaks truth—my colour does not go in a week or a month, and those whom I protect are under strong guard.” “When one is far off and alone, it would not be well to grow blotched and leprous of a sudden,” said Mahbub. “When thou wast with me I could oversee the matter. Besides, a Pathan is a fair-skin. Strip to the waist now and look how thou art whitened.” Huneefa felt her way back from an inner room. “It is no matter, she cannot see.” He took a pewter bowl from her ringed hand. The dye-stuff showed blue and gummy. Kim experimented on the back of his wrist, with a dab of cotton-wool; but Huneefa heard him. “No, no,” she cried, “the thing is not done thus, but with the proper ceremonies. The colouring is the least part. I give thee the full protection of the Road.”