"But who asks you to do all that?" said the child. "You may stand as mute as a fish: it will be your companion's business to do the talking."
"There is to be another one then? But, great Masdak! I hope that will be enough at any rate!"
"Why will you constantly interrupt me?" the little girl put in. "Listen first and raise objections after wards. The second messenger—now open your ears wide—it is I, I myself;—but if you stand still again, you will really betray me. The long and short of it is, that as surely as I mean to save Paula, I mean to go forth to meet Amru, and if you refuse to go with me I will set out alone and try whether Gibbus the hunchback…."
Rustem had needed some time to collect his senses after this stupendous surprise, but now he exclaimed: "You—you—to Berenice, and over the mountains. . . ."
"Yes, over the mountains," she repeated, "and if need be, through the clouds."
"But such a thing was never heard of, never heard of on this earth!" the Persian remonstrated. "A girl, a little lady like you—a messenger, and all alone with a clumsy fellow like me. No, no, no!"
"And again no, and a hundred times over no!" cried the child merrily. "The little lady will stop at home and you will take a boy with you—a boy called Marius, not Mary."
"A boy! But I thought.—It is enough to puzzle one…."
"A boy who is a girl and a boy in one," laughed Mary. "But if you must have it in plain words: I shall dress up as a boy to go with you; to-morrow when we set out you will see, you will take me for my own brother."
"Your own brother! With a little face like yours! Then the most impossible things will become possible," cried Rustem laughing, and he looked down good humoredly at the little girl. But suddenly the preposterousness of her scheme rose again before his mind, and he exclaimed half-frantically: "But then my master!—It will not do—It will never do!"