During the days of our partnership (or, as he no doubt viewed it, of his management of this road show) Bindra had grown ever more cocky. He was, after all, a city boy among farmers—he kept himself aloof from the village children, occasionally deigning to answer them while he worked on the cart by the light of the lamp, and it occasionally seemed to me that his moon face was older than those of the others his size. He did not understand how our tricks were done, but by this time he was convinced that they were tricks, and that was enough to make him superior to the gullible. On this, our sixth morning on the road, he got the donkey started, then hesitated, and turned to me.

“Teach me to draw a coin from an ear,” he commanded.

“You have not the purity of spirit,” I said blithely.

He was not impressed. “I do not believe it is the spirit that does the act. It is a trick of the hands, and I wish to learn it.”

“I cannot teach it,” I told him, and that was the end of it for the moment. I did not imagine the boy would let it drop, however; nor did I imagine the way in which he would force me into teaching him.

With the morning sun behind us and Bindra and the cart far enough ahead to give the dust time to settle, he discovered a new game. My first inkling of it was when the road ahead of me exploded into a flare of light, painful and completely blinding.

“Damn!” I cried, and raised my hand to block it—only it had stopped. I blinked furiously, and when I could see the road again, it was as before, with the boy and the glittering cart. At first I thought one of the looking-glass stars had caught the light, although they seemed too small for that. Then I noticed the boy’s hands, holding the folding ladies’ looking-glass up before his face.

“Bindra!” I shouted. “Khabadar! Shaitan ka batcha!”

He turned around to walk backwards, shrugging his shoulders at me, all innocence.

A few minutes later it happened again. Deliberate, the little brat, I knew. The kid needed something to keep his hands busy—oh.

“He really is something,” I muttered to Holmes, and trotted ahead to dig the cloth practise balls from the cart.

I took out the red one, showed the boy how to toss it, then told him to practise the motion until he could do it for fifty paces down the road with his eyes shut.

“Er, do you know how to count to fifty?” I asked him. He glared at me and snatched the ball.