“Oh yes,” she cried: “a fakir whom I knew at Cairo taught me how to charm lizards. The first time we see any green lizards I will show you how to mesmerise them.”
“I'm afraid you'll not have quite so much practice here as you had in Egypt,” said Agnes. “Our green lizards are not plentiful. I will get you to impart to me your secret so far as the pigeons are concerned; I won't trouble you to teach me the incantation for the lizards. You joined the Andalusian at Suez, I suppose?”
“Yes; Colonel and Mrs. Adrian took charge of me on the voyage to England, and it was from their house in London I wrote to you,” replied Clare.
“Adrian and I had gone through a campaign together,” said Claude. “His face was the first that I recognised on my return to civilisation. I knew no one at Uganda, and at Zanzibar I avoided seeing any one, though the newspaper correspondents were very friendly; but Adrian was the first man I saw when I got aboard the steamer at the Red Sea. Seeing him made me feel old. I had left him a captain with about half-a-dozen between him and a majority. It appears that the frontier people had taken advantage of my enforced absence to get up a quarrel or two with their legitimate rulers who had annexed them a year or two before; and it only required a few accidents to give Adrian his command.”
“Colonel Adrian told us that Mr. W'estwood had been giving it as his opinion that it was very hard that he had not had an opportunity of distinguishing himself while the Colonel had been so fortunate,” laughed Clare, turning to Agnes.
“Did the newspaper men show any great desire to have an interview with your friend, Colonel Adrian?” said Agnes.
“If they had they would have learned something about the Chitralis and their ways,” said Claude. “I'm afraid that the people in England are slightly indifferent to the great question of the North-West frontier.”
Clare laughed, and Agnes perceived that he had been giving a little imitation of the Indian officer, who had become an authority on the great frontier question and could not understand how people at home refused to devote themselves to its study.
“Englishmen want to hear about nothing but Africa just now,” said Agnes. “They have come to regard Africa as an English colony.”
“And yet the greatest living explorer of Africa refuses to communicate a single paragraph to the newspapers in regard to his discoveries,” cried Clare. “I consider that a great shame; I hope you feel as strongly on the subject, my dear Miss Mowbray.”