'Do you believe it?'
'I certainly do.'
'Jove! I wonder how they managed to get into those foreign holy of holies.'
'Backsheesh,' I answered tartly.
'Look here, Carl!' Dave jerked himself erect in the middle of his bed. 'Suppose you wanted to get in with those people, how would you do it?'
'Dave,' I replied, 'why weren't you born with just a little bump of what you mistakenly call imagination? I'll show you to-morrow how to do the thing.'
'How?' Dave stubbornly insisted.
'Well, if I must talk all night, suppose in the morning we go to Cairo, and find our way to some one in some small degree an authority—some one who can talk a little English, and most of them can. I might offer my man a cigar, and praise his show a bit, and then tell him how I want to tell the world all about him; how I want to see how they live, not so briefly, you understand. The circumlocution office is as much in vogue in the Orient as, according to our mutual friend Dickens, it is in old England. Well, when he fully understands that I admire their life and manners, and want to live it as well as write it, I begin to bid. They're here for money, and they won't let any pass them—see?'
'Old man!' cried Dave, smiting his knee with vigour, 'I'm going to try it on!'