“I say, sir, you do look rum! I shouldn’t have known you. I don’t know you now, and I don’t believe your own mother would.”
“Then you think the disguise is perfect enough?”
“Disguise, sir? You can’t call that a disguise! It’s the real thing. Why, you’re a downright genuine nigger, that you are!”
“That’s right, Sam,” said Frank, smiling now.
“And the best of it is, sir, that you’re regular fast colours.”
“I hope so, Sam.”
“Think you could bear to wash yourself, sir?”
“Oh, yes. It will take weeks to make this look lighter.”
“Well, I call it amazing, sir. There ain’t no need for you to mind where you go. No dervish could take you for a white man, unless he was mad. But am I to be painted that colour?”
“No; you will go as you are—the Hakim’s white servant.”