"'Be it so!' she replied, 'especially as I am rather hungry!'
"'Our ride has given us an appetite, too, but all the provisions are with the camels.'
"'Oh! she replied, with a still broken voice, 'I always carry my lunch with me.'
"She produced a sort of cartridge-box, which she carried on her belt, wherein was a supply of excellent viands, and we soon came to the conclusion that if her heart was affected, her digestion was unimpaired.
"When our caravan appeared in sight, Périères mounted his steed and trotted off to tell Madame de Guéran that her travelling companion had been recovered.
"As soon as I was alone with Miss Poles, I made a trial of moral homoeopathy; I put in force the system of like to like, similia similibus. I tried to cure her one love by another, and to substitute our friend Périères for the too volatile Delange. It was doing poor Périères a shabby turn, but it was absolutely necessary to console our companion and to replace one weakness by another. I sang the praises of Périères to such an extent; I depicted him in such tender, sentimental, plaintive colours; I so delicately hinted at a supposititious weakness on his part for Miss Poles, that at the end of an hour's conversation, a smile once more spread itself over our Englishwoman's lips, and her heart caught glimpses of a new horizon.
"'All right, my friend,' said Périères, when he heard how I had disposed of him, 'I owe you one for that.'
CHAPTER XXXIV.
"At our evening's halting place, near the well of Roway, the inhabitants of a neighbouring encampment very unexpectedly made an inroad upon us in search of medicine.
"This was a matter for Delange, and he entered thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, causing the people to form a circle round him, and endeavouring, with the assistance of an interpreter, to question each one in turn about the particular malady from which he imagined himself to be suffering. But the Doctor's new patients spoke all at once, with no end of gesticulations and shouting. They pushed, they struggled, they hustled each other, they fought for the position nearest to the Doctor, and to attract his attention. It was an awful row, a regular hubbub, a riot in fact.