the Old Man of Mountain

"Jolly good curry!" said Bob Jackson, looking up over his spoon. "What do you say, Mac?" "Ay," responded Alan Mackenzie, in a drawl. He was a man of few words. "Your Hamid is certainly a treasure of a cook," Jackson went on. "Has he done you yet, Dick?" "Probably, but I haven't found him out, so it doesn't matter," answered Dick Forrester, the third of the party. "It shows you!" "What?" asked Mackenzie, who always required statements in full. "Why, you owl, that it's sometimes better to rely on your instincts than on the advice of kind busybodies. When I came through Calcutta, everybody advised me to wait till I got up country before engaging a man, told me the casuals of the Calcutta hotels were sharks ready to prey on any griffin, and so on. But I came across Hamid, liked the look of him----"