“Oh! I’ve got my snuff—at least I am to have it, and if they will feed us well I don’t suppose I should mind very much. The fact is, Preston, I’ve been working so hard all my life that I like this change. Doing nothing is very pleasant when you are tired.”
“Of course it is,” said the professor smiling.
“And so long as there’s no nonsense about cutting off men’s heads, or any of that rubbish, I rather like being taken a prisoner by brigands. I wonder what a London policeman would think of such a state of affairs.”
“My masters are submitting wisely to their fate,” said Yussuf gravely; “and while we are waiting, and those people think we are quite patient, I shall come with his excellency Preston, and while he draws I shall make plans, not of the city, but how to escape.”
Further conversation was cut short by the coming of Mr and Mrs Chumley, who eagerly asked—at least Mr Chumley wished to ask eagerly, but he was stopped by his lady, who retained the right—what arrangements had been made. And she was told.
“Oh, dear!” she sighed, “then that means weary waiting again. Oh, Charley! why would you insist upon coming to this wretched land?”
Mr Chumley opened his mouth in astonishment, but he did not speak then, he only waited a few minutes, and then took Lawrence’s arm, and sat whispering to him apart, telling him how Mrs Chumley had insisted upon coming to Turkey when he wanted to go to Paris, and nowhere else, and that he was the most miserable man in the world.
Lawrence heard him in silence, and as he sat he wondered how it was the most miserable man in the world could look so round and happy and grow so fat.