"You are safe in saying so, the opportunity being lacking." She laughed, and folded it up.
"I believe Kingsley Bey means what he says in that letter. Whatever his purpose, I honestly think that you might have great influence over him," mused Dicky, and, getting up, stepped from the veranda, as though to go to the bank where an incoming steamer they had been watching was casting anchor. He turned presently, however, came back a step and said "You see, all our argument resolves itself into this: if Kingsley is to be smashed only Ismail can do it. If Ismail does it, Kingsley will have the desert for a bed, for he'll not run, and Ismail daren't spare him. Sequel, all his fortune will go to the Khedive. Question, what are we going to do about it?"
So saying he left them, laughing, and went down the garden-path to the riverside. The two on the veranda sat silent for a moment, then Kingsley spoke.
"These weren't the things we talked about when we saw the clouds gather over Skaw Fell and the sun shine on the Irish Sea. We've done and seen much since then. Multitudes have come and gone in the world—and I have grown grey!" he added with a laugh.
"I've done little-nothing, and I meant and hoped to do much," she almost pleaded. "I've grown grey too."
"Not one grey hair," he said, with an admiring look. "Grey in spirit sometimes," she reflected with a tired air. "But you—forgive me, if I haven't known what you've done. I've lived out of England so long. You may be at the head of the Government, for all I know. You look to me as though you'd been a success. Don't smile. I mean it. You look as though you'd climbed. You haven't the air of an eldest son whose way is cut out for him, with fifty thousand a year for compensation. What have you been doing? What has been your work in life?"
"The opposite of yours."
He felt himself a ruffian, but he consoled himself with the thought that the end at which he aimed was good. It seemed ungenerous to meet her simple honesty by such obvious repartee, but he held on to see where the trail would lead.
"That doesn't seem very clear," she said in answer. "Since I came out here I've been a sort of riverine missionary, an apostle with no followers, a reformer with a plan of salvation no one will accept."
"We are not stronger than tradition, than the long custom of ages bred in the bone and practised by the flesh. You cannot change a people by firmans; you must educate them. Meanwhile, things go on pretty much the same. You are a generation before your time. It is a pity, for you have saddened your youth, and you may never live to see accomplished what you have toiled for."