"Nonsense," said Paul; "you mock me, brother."
"I mean it," said Peter, and would have insisted, but that the sledge was found to be too much damaged for use.
"I hope they are not anxious about us," said Peter, as the pair reached the Ootin mansion and passed upstairs. "We will pretend we walked for choice; no need to alarm them."
But no one was alarmed. The little party awaiting their arrival here had been too busy to have time for anxieties. It was Vera who told the news. She took a hand of Paul and a hand of Peter. "Dear brothers," she said, "you both love me so well, and I you, that no other lips but mine shall tell you of the happiness the new year has brought me. I am to be married to one who is dear, I know, to both of you—Mr. Thirlstone."
"It is strange," said Peter that night, as the brothers lay in bed and talked over the events of the day, "how little I seem to mind Vera being engaged to the Englishman. How could I have been such a fool as to think—you know—what I told you?"
"I expect we are both rather young for that kind of thing," said Paul, with a sigh. "I think hunting is more in our line, brother; we understand that better."
In spite of which wise and true remark, Paul cried himself to sleep that night, Peter being fast asleep long before, and quite unconscious that his younger brother was engaged in a second attempt to play the hero—an attempt which, this time, was partly a failure.
LOST IN THE SOUDAN.
Bimbashi Jones, or, as he was called at the beginning of the story, Lieutenant Jones, did not know much. He only knew that England, or Egypt, or both together, were about to administer what he would have called "beans," or perhaps "toko," to a person called the Khalifa, who had merited chastisement by desiring to "boss it" at Khartoum, which city, Jones was assured, belonged by right, together with the rest of the Soudan, to Egypt, and therefore in a way (and not a bad way either, Jones used to add with a look of intelligence, when talking of these things with his peers) to England.