I recalled a far-off college gymnasium, and nodded.
“Take you’re own gait, only so you get it done,” cried the butler, charging the fleeing Arabs.
I discarded the bottle process and rigged up an apparatus after the fashion of a handled holly-stone. By evening, the polishing was half completed. When I turned my attention to the dust-streaked windows, late the next afternoon, the ballroom floor was in a condition that boded ill for any but sure-footed dancers. The outbreak of festivities found me general assistant to the culinary department, separated only by a Japanese screen from the contrasting class of society; represented by such guests as Lord Cromer and his youthful Lady, the ex-Empress Eugenie, the Crown Prince of Sweden, and the brother of the Khedive. Deeply did I regret the lack of inventiveness that forced me to report to the sleepless inmates of the Asile to which Cap Stevenson admitted me long after closing hours, that the conversation of so distinguished a gathering had been commonplace, the dancing unanimated, and the flirting unseemly.
By arrangement with Tom, I continued to “do it” long after the day of the ball. The fare at the servants’ table was beyond criticism, but I declined a blanket and a straw-strewn stall in the consul’s stable, and retained my cot at the Asile at a daily cost of two piastres. As my earnings grew, I repaired, one night, to the American Mission Hospital, mounted to the third story, knocked on the first door to the right, pushed it open, and astonished an aged missionary from Pittsburg out of a night’s labor. One idle hour, too, I examined again the garments I had left with Cap Stevenson and found them less useless than I had once imagined. The shirt, being tied together, front and back, with string, awoke the envy of all the “comrades.” For the bosom was of many layers, and, as each one became soiled, I had but to strip it off, and behold!—a clean shirt. When I had laid the bundle away again, it contained only the minister’s frock coat.
Cap Stevenson had made a scientific study of the genus vagabundus that enabled him to gauge with surprising precision the demands that would be made on the Asile from day to day. There fell into my hands, one evening, a Cairo newspaper, containing the following item:—
Suez, February 2d, 1905.
The French troop-ship ——, outward bound to Madagascar with five hundred recruits, reports that while midway between Port Saïd and Ismaïlia, in her passage of the canal, five recruits who had been standing at the rail suddenly sprang overboard and swam for the shore. One was carried under and crushed by the ship’s screw. The others landed and were last seen hurrying away into the desert. All concerned were Germans.
I entered the office to point out the item to the superintendent.
“Aye,” said Cap, “I’ve seen it. That’s common enough. They’ll be here for dinner day after to-morrow.”
They arrived exactly at the hour named, the four of them, weather-beaten and bedraggled from their swim and the tramp across the desert, but supplied with the Reverend ——’s tickets. Two of the quartet were very engaging fellows with whom I was soon on intimate terms. One of this pair had spent some months in Egypt years before, after using the same means to make the passage from Europe.