“Well, what else do you call it?—mounting guard, and fighting robbers, and all that sort of thing. I’m getting quite excited, only I don’t know yet whether it’s true.”
“It is true enough,” said Lawrence laughing.
“Oh, I don’t know so much about that. It doesn’t seem to be possible. Couldn’t believe that such things went on in these days, when people use telephones and telegraphs and read newspapers.”
“It does seem strange and unreal, sir, but then so do all these beautiful valleys and mountains.”
“So they do to us, my boy. Shouldn’t wonder if they are all theatrical scenery, or else we shall wake up directly both of us and say, ‘Lo! it was a dream.’”
Lawrence sneezed twice heavily, for it was impossible to be in Mr Burne’s company long without suffering from the impalpable dust that pervaded all his clothes; and as the old gentleman looked on with a grim smile and clapped his young companion on the shoulder, he exclaimed:
“You are right, Lawrence, my lad, it is all real, and that proves it. I never knew anyone sneeze in a dream. There, go back. Relieve guard. I’m sentry now, and I feel as if I were outside Buckingham Palace, or the British Museum, only I ought to have a black bearskin on instead of this red fez with the yellow roll round it. How does it look, eh?”
“Splendid, sir. It quite improves you,” replied Lawrence.
“Get out, you young impostor!” cried the old lawyer. “There, be off. You are getting well.”
Lawrence laughed and went back to the camping-place by the spring, where Hamed was bathing his ankles in the cold water, and Yussuf was diligently attending to the horses, whose legs he hobbled so as to keep them from straying away, though they showed very little inclination for this, the clear water and the abundant clover proving too great an attraction for them to care to go far.