I was to draw a very good salary. My friends in Cairo, however, warned me that salaries were not always paid very regularly, but sometimes allowed to run on till cash came into the Treasury. It was during the good times of Ismail Pacha. This made me a little suspicious that my salary might run on so fast that I should not be able to catch it.
The other post offered me was that of London correspondent to an important Parisian newspaper.
I had had enough of military "glory" by this time. Yet the prospect of an adventurous life is always more or less fascinating at twenty-three years of age.
Being the only child of a good widowed mother, I thought I would take her valuable advice on the subject.
I am fortunate in having a mother full of common sense. With her French provincial ideas, she was rather startled to hear that a disabled lieutenant could all at once become an active colonel. She thought that somehow the promotion was too rapid.
Alas! she, too, had had enough of military "glory."
Her advice was to be followed, for it was formulated thus: "You speak English pretty well; we have a good many friends in England; accept the humbler offer, and go to England to earn an honest living."
This is how I was not with Arabi Pacha on the wrong side at Tel-el-Kebir, and how it became my lot to make one day the acquaintance of the British school-boy of whom I shall have more to say by-and-by.