“Sorry, but there isn’t even any word for ‘hurry’ in Arabic,” he said good-humoredly. “You’re like the rest of the Americans, Perry, you jolly well want everything done at once. In the East, you know, you’ve got to use the methods of the East.”
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” said the lad, flushing, “but I do so want to go. It’s all like feeling a dream come true.”
“There is a great deal of that feeling, I think,” said his uncle, coming to the boy’s aid. “I know, I, for one, feel strange. I suppose if this were merely a pleasure trip, the hiring of camels and so forth might seem more or less natural. But, after all, this is an American Museum expedition for fossil-hunting, and I’ve equipped a score of expeditions for just such purposes, out West. There, Mr. Wyr, it would seem quite natural to hire cow-ponies or mules in some little jerk-water town, where there would be nothing but a bunch of frame houses, a general store, a couple of churches and half a dozen saloons. Two or three cowboys riding in from the range, shooting up the town, wouldn’t surprise me a bit, I’m more or less used to that. But these bazaars of Cairo are so far removed from that picture that I can hardly believe that I’m really equipping a paleontological expedition.”
The Englishman smiled understandingly.
“I should feel the same way if I were out in your Wild West,” he said, “and a few ‘cowboys, shooting up the town,’ as you call it, would seem to me jolly well like a circus performance. I should be as much out of it making arrangements there, as you feel here. But I think you’ll find, Dr. Hunt, that the men and animals I have hired will be satisfactory, that is, as satisfactory as can be expected in the East. We’re not what you call ‘hustlers,’ in Egypt, you know.”
“I think you English have done wonders,” the scientist replied, “look at the Assouan Dam,” and the talk drifted into the ever-important question of the irrigation problems of the Nile.
Perry was impatient, but he did his best not to show it, and in the meantime was thinking hard. As soon as the party returned to the hotel, he slipped away and had an earnest conversation with one of the hotel guides. He turned up at lunch half an hour later, with a suspiciously innocent look. His uncle, who had begun to understand the lad, said to him suddenly,
“What have you got up your sleeve, Perry?”
“I was thinking,” the boy answered, “that, if you didn’t mind, I’d like to go over to the Pyramids this afternoon.”
“With Antoine? Certainly. Why not?”