` So be it . After service -- thou hast said ? -- comes the reward . I am the Woman of Shamlegh , and I hold from the Rajah . I am no common bearer of babes . Shamlegh is thine : hoof and horn and hide , milk and butter . Take or leave . ' She turned resolutely uphill , her silver necklaces clicking on her broad breast , to meet the morning sun fifteen hundred feet above them . This time Kim thought in the vernacular as he waxed down the oilskin edges of the packets . ` How can a man follow the Way or the Great Game when he is so -- always pestered by women ? There was that girl at Akrola of the Ford ; and there was the scullion 's wife behind the dovecot -- not counting the others -- and now comes this one ! When I was a child it was well enough , but now I am a man and they will not regard me as a man . Walnuts , indeed ! Ho ! ho ! It is almonds in the Plains ! ' He went out to levy on the village -- not with a begging-bowl , which might do for down-country , but in the manner of a prince . Shamlegh 's summer population is only three families -- four women and eight or nine men . They were all full of tinned meats and mixed drinks , from ammoniated quinine to white vodka , for they had taken their full share in the overnight loot . The neat Continental tents had been cut up and shared long ago , and there were patent aluminium saucepans abroad .
But they considered the lama 's presence a perfect safeguard against all consequences , and impenitently brought Kim of their best -- even to a drink of chang -- the barley-beer that XXXXX from Ladakh-way .
Take clicking comes counting cut hold pestered taken thought went