“I saw it, sir, and it’s quite true,” was the artless reply.
“The deuce it is!” muttered Dr. Bromby. “That hardly betters matters. I have ordered every copy of this paper to be burnt, Strange,” said the doctor severely, “and in future, I wish to look through your manuscript myself before it goes to the press. Unalloyed truth is sometimes out of place. Stick to your classics, Strange, you will write well some day, that is, if you become a little surer in your Latin, otherwise your English will always be slovenly. If I were you I should reserve some of my experiences, if you are in the habit of entertaining your fags with them in off-times,” concluded the doctor.
“Yes, sir,” said Humphrey, and departed cheerily.
Strange had just now come back unexpectedly from a long tour in Algeria. According to his own way of thinking he had had a glorious time if ever man had. He had lived in the tents of the Arabs, in the camps of the coast Zouaves, and in the hills and the deserts with the Bedouins, like David.
He had known
“Of the plunge in a pool’s living water, the hunt of the bear,
And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold-dust divine,
And the locust flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine.”
He had braved heat, cold, hunger, thirst, filth and squalor, fleas and worse than fleas, snakes and beasts of prey, but he had learned a new variety of man and of the conditions that mould men’s lives.