“Why?” asked the boy.
“Because you need to be, in order to stand your first few hours on camel back. You’d better take a jolly good rest to-day.”
“I wasn’t planning to rest to-day at all,” responded Perry. Then, turning to the professor, he continued,
“Uncle George, when are we going to the Pyramids?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, now,” was the reply. “I had planned to give to-morrow to sight-seeing, but as we shall be able to start for the desert to-morrow, thanks to the courtesy of the Egyptian Survey, I think I’ll give up the idea of visiting them now. Perhaps we’ll have time on the way back.”
“Are we going to be anywhere near the Pyramids to-night?”
“Right at them. We’re leaving this afternoon for the hotel close by. The caravan will meet us there in the morning.”
The boy looked impatiently toward the expert, who was still wrangling with a camel-driver.
“I wish Mr. Wyr would hurry,” he confided to his uncle in a low tone. “I want to get out and see the Pyramids.”
In spite of the lowering of the tone, however, the other heard him.