"I think you did well, Thomson," said the Colonel. "When you've got to take a thing, you'd better stand up and take it, and the quicker the better."
"Yes, sir," said Thomson; and adjusted the jalousies, it being now very warm and the glare at times insupportable.
The Colonel, under the guidance of a dragoman of the best, had been shopping, and was in white duck. Hagar, too, had secured from a French shop muslin and nainsook.
Thomson had been concerned for her lack of any maid or female companionship. He had gently broached the subject a week or two before. "Mrs. Ashendyne had an excellent maid, Miss, who was with us on the yacht that night and was saved. But she's of a high-wrought nature, and the shock and cold and everything rather laid her up. She has a brother who is a photographer in Cairo, having married a native woman, and she's gone to stay with him awhile, before she goes back into service. If that hadn't been the case, Miss, you might, if you wished, have taken her on. I think she would have given satisfaction. As it is, Miss, I know some English people with a shop here, and I think through them I could find you some one. She would not be a superior lady's maid like Cécile, but—"
Hagar had declined the offer. "I never had a maid, thank you, Thomson. I can do for myself very well."
She liked Thomson, and Thomson agreed with the nurse that she was a considerate young lady. Now, having adjusted the blinds, Thomson left the room.
The Colonel paced up and down, his hands behind him. The white duck was becoming; he did not look sixty. Hair, mustache, and imperial were quite grey; except for that he had never aged to Hagar's eyes. His body had the same height and swing, the same fine spareness; his voice kept the same rich inflections, all the way from mellow and golden to the most corroding acid; he dominated, just as she remembered him in her childhood. Not all of his two weeks in Egypt had been spent by Medway's bedside; he had been fairly over Alexandria, and to Meks and Ramleh, and even afield to Abûkir and Rosetta. He had offered to take her with him upon these later excursions, but she had refused. The brother of her father's wife was going with him, and she correctly thought that they would be freer without her. The Colonel acquiesced. "I dare say you'll have chances enough to see things, Gipsy." It was her first intimation that any one had in mind her staying....
Now the Colonel, after pacing awhile, spoke reflectively. "At this rate it won't be long before he's really well enough to talk. I'll have to have several talks with him. Did you gather, Gipsy, that Thomson had told him that he would remain crippled?"
"I do not think he told him that, grandfather."