“Well, then, there’s no imposture there. We’ll go right up to Khartoum, together with our servants, and get the poor boy away. That’s settled, so you had better lay in your stock of ointment-pots, bottles, plaisters, and pills.”
“Well, I’m beginning to think I’m dreaming,” said the doctor.
“But you are not,” said the professor, and he turned to Frank, who was excitedly listening to all that was said. “Now then, my boy,” he said, “we’ve settled that; but I can’t see that by any possibility you could come with us.”
“I can,” said the lad eagerly. “You talked about having servants with you.”
“Yes, blacks,” said the professor. “It would not do to take white ones.”
“Very well, then, I’ll go as a black.”
The doctor and the professor turned upon the speaker sharply, and fixed him with their eyes, as if doubtful about the state of his mind, gazing at him in silence, till he laughed merrily.
“I have not lost a slate or tile,” he said. “I am quite what Morris calls compos mentis.”
“No,” said the doctor sharply; “I’ll be hanged if you can be, Frank, my lad.”
“And so say I,” chimed in the professor. “How in the world can you go as a black?”