"A week? Is not that rather sanguine?"
"I do not think so, the sooner the better; and during that week I should think she could hardly make any attempt to see him."
"Has she shown any signs of making one hitherto?"
"Well, no"—rather grudgingly. "In fact, between you and me, considering that it is they who have brought him into this plight, I think they might have shown a little more solicitude about him. In the last ten days I do not believe that they have been once to the door to inquire."
"You do not seem to be aware," says Jim, in a voice which, though quiet, is not pacific, "and that is odd, considering how often I told you, that until you came Mrs. Le Marchant nursed him like a mother; not like a mother, indeed"—correcting himself with a somewhat malicious intention—"for mothers grow flurried, and she never did."
"You mean that she nursed him better than I do," in a jealous tone. "Well"—more generously—"how shabby of me to mind, if she did! I do not mind. God bless her for it! I always thought"—compunctiously—"that she looked a nice woman."
"She is nice—as nice"—descending into a slang unworthy of his ripe years—"as they make 'em."
"And the girl—I suppose one can hardly call her a girl—looks nice too."
They are passing the Casbah, the solid Moorish fortifications, about which now hang only a few gaitered, sunburnt, baggy Zouaves.
Jim has a silly hope that, if he maintains an entire silence, the current of his companion's ideas may drift into another channel; but he is soon undeceived.