We found rooms for the night, and arranged to leave the donkey and our heavier belongings with the innkeeper while we took the train to Simla. The man swore that no one would so much as lay a finger on anything, and guaranteed it by taking only a small payment, leaving the larger part until we returned. Holmes then went off to make arrangements with an ironmonger and carpenter for some conversions to the cart itself, which negotiations took the better part of the afternoon. We had intended to leave Bindra with our possessions, but the boy, unimpressed by the town, would have none of it, and in the end, it was easier to allow him to come than to keep arguing. At least he did not insist on a space in our room that night, making do with a charpoy in the stables. I saw him at dusk, sitting cross-legged, tossing the red and green balls up and down.

The boy was waiting for us when we came down in the morning, no doubt fearful we would sneak out and leave him behind. Still, I could not quite understand why a trip into the mountains with us was preferable to a warm, quiet holiday in the stables. So when we were standing on the platform waiting for the train that would climb with us to Simla, I asked him.

“Why do you keep following us?”

“Because you are so very interesting,” he retorted. “And I learn many things—see?” That morning he had demanded that I give him the yellow ball, and he now stood, tossing the three spheres up and catching them in a smooth rhythm, talking nonchalantly all the while. Soon he would be better than I.

“You’re going to wear them out,” I said.

“When do I throw the mirror-balls? And when do I throw with you?”

“The mirror-balls when you can keep these in the air for two hundred paces without dropping them. And as a partner when you can keep five up.” It would be far more expertise than he’d need to hold up his end of a two-person team, but it condemned the urchin to solitary labours for a few more days while I accustomed myself to the idea of a three-person partnership. “Bindra, can you read and write?”

“Oah yes. I write my name,” he asserted, but he began to concentrate closely on the trio of coloured balls he was tossing and catching with smooth competence.

“Why are you not in school?”

“I told you, I learn things from you.”

“You should be in school.”

He did not bother to answer. I tried another tack. “How old are you, Bindra?”

“Maybe twenty?” But before I could react, he changed it to “Or eleven? I think more than eight, I can remember eight.”

“Where are you from? Where is your family?”

“I have no family.”

“You’re an orphan?”