“Fees, Darrell,” replied the doctor, handing him the two rings. “Pass them round. The emerald is from the Rajah, and the Ranee gave me the pearl, with a mothers thanks. Sounds quite pretty and English, doesn’t it?”
The officers exchanged glances.
“As for the Rajah,” continued the doctor, “he sent for me last night and asked me to make up my mind to stay with him always as his mother’s and his special attendant.”
“Terms?” said Wyatt bluntly.
“Whatever I liked to ask,” replied the doctor.
“Going to close with the offer?” said Wyatt.
“No; don’t,” replied Hulton. “For one thing, Doctor, we can’t spare you, and some day or other we shall have to go. For another, you will never feel safe. The more I see of these people, the more I feel that it is like living on the slope of a volcano. Everything is very beautiful, but at any moment the eruption may come, and with it death and destruction.”
“Hear the words of the wise man, Robson, my son,” said Wyatt in a stilted, ponderous, mock-tragic way. “Some day, in spite of the Rajah’s wishes, we shall be recalled, and then what am I to do with you left behind, or Dick Darrell here when he has been overeating himself, or made himself ill with one or another of his boyish follies?”
“My boyish follies, indeed!” cried Dick hotly.
“Yes,” said Wyatt.—“Look here, Physic; Hulton is right. Everything is going on delightfully smoothly now. The queen worships us; the Wazir always seems as if he wanted to lick our boots; and as for the old Brahmin, I’m sure he oils his tongue as well as the rest of his body, so as to be smoother and smoother, but it is only because he is scheming to get rid of the men of the temple guard.”