“You look older, when you don’t smile,” she added, and glanced at his grey hair.
He laughed now. She was far, far franker than she was those many years ago, and it was very agreeable and refreshing. “Donovan, there, reproved me last night for frivolity,” he said.
“If Donovan Pasha has become grave, then there is hope for Egypt,” she said, turning to Dicky with a new brightness.
“When there’s hope for Egypt, I’ll have lost my situation, and there’ll be reason for drawing a long face,” said Dicky, and got the two at such an angle that he could watch them to advantage. “I thrive while it’s opera boufe. Give us the legitimate drama, and I go with Ismail.”
The lady shrank a little. “If it weren’t you, Donovan Pasha, I should say that, associated with Ismail, as you are, you are as criminal as he.”
“What is crime in one country, is virtue in another,” answered Dicky. “I clamp the wheel sometimes to keep it from spinning too fast. That’s my only duty. I am neither Don Quixote nor Alexander Imperator.”
She thought he was referring obliquely to the corvee and the other thing in which her life-work was involved. She became severe. “It is compromising with evil,” she said.
“No. It’s getting a breakfast-roll instead of the whole bakery,” he answered.
“What do you think?” she exclaimed, turning to Kingsley.
“I think there’s one man in Egypt who keeps the boiler from bursting,” he answered.