“I flatter myself that I have managed that with considerable dramatic talent,” said Tom Strachan, as he stood looking at the two, holding each other’s hands in silence, and looking into each other’s eyes.
“Yes,” said Harry Forsyth, answering the question in the other’s look; “I have found it, and it is here in my breast, all perfectly right.”
“Yes, he has found it,” echoed Strachan. “Where there’s a will there’s a way, and the way in this instance was the kourbash. I hope the fellow got it hot, Harry.”
“Pretty fairly; I think Kavanagh would have been satisfied, though he has been disappointed in his desire to wield the lash himself. Don’t you remember?”
“Well, all you have got to do now,” said Strachan to Kavanagh, “is to get back to England as quick as they will take you, purchase your discharge, and enjoy your otium cum dignitate.”
“Thank you, sir; if you will kindly say a word for me it will help,” replied Kavanagh.
The little word sir struck with strange harshness on Harry Forsyth’s ears. But, of course, Kavanagh was but a full private, and Strachan was an officer, if he came to think and realise it. He had been about to say:
“Here we three chums have met at last, ever so many miles up the Nile, and I shall believe in presentiments as long as I live;” but he did not like, after that word sir, to class his two old friends in the same category; it might make an awkwardness, he felt.
“I do not like the idea of quitting the service altogether,” said Kavanagh.
“If we have this war with Russia they talk about, and I get well in time, and can qualify, I wonder if I shall have a chance of getting a commission. Surely it will not be so difficult as it was when I tried before, and I nearly qualified. I wonder whether my service in the ranks would be allowed to count in any way.”