“How I’d like to see you on my Arab ‘Said.’ Such a creature! so large-eyed, and with such a full nostril, the face so concave in front, the true Arab type, and the jaw a complete semicircle. How proud he’d look under you, with that haughty snort he gives, as he bends his knee. He was the present of a great Rajah to me—one of those native fellows we are graciously pleased to call rebels, because they don’t fancy to be slaves. Two years ago he owned a territory about the size of half Spain, and he is now something like a brigand chief, with a few hundred followers.”
“Dear Harry, do not talk of India—at least not of the mutiny.”
“Mutiny! Why call it mutiny, Florry? Well, love, I have done,” he muttered, for the word escaped him, and he feared how she might resent it.
“Come back to my lightness of hand.”
“Or of heart, for I sorely suspect, Florence, the quality is not merely a manual one.”
“Am I steering well?”
“Perfectly. Would that I could sail on and on for ever thus:
Over an ocean just like this,
A life of such untroubled bliss.”
Calvert threw in a sentimental glance with this quotation.
“In other words, an existence of nothing to do,” said she, laughing, “with an excellent cigar to beguile it.”