"Certainly, my lord," said the red-headed figure in the fez, and again the sinister face of the Pasha smiled.
"And now tell me, Pasha," said the Consul-General, "how long a time will it take to pass this law through the Legislative Council and the Council of Ministers?"
The Pasha looked up out of his small, shrewd eyes, and answered—
"Just as long or as short as your lordship desires."
And then the Consul-General, who was wiping his spectacles, put them deliberately on to his nose, looked deliberately into the Pasha's face, and deliberately replied—
"Then let it be done without a day's delay, your Excellency."
A few minutes afterwards, without too much ceremony, the Consul-General had dismissed his visitors and was tearing open a number of English newspapers which Ibrahim had brought into the room.
The first of them, The Times, contained a report of the Mansion House Dinner, headed "UNREST IN THE EAST. Important Speech by Foreign Minister."
The Consul-General found the beginning full of platitudes. Egypt had become the great gate between the Eastern and Western hemispheres. It was essential for the industry and enterprise of mankind that that gate should be kept open, and therefore it was necessary that Egypt should be under a peaceful, orderly, and legal Government.
Then, lowering the lights, the Minister had begun to speak to slow music. While it was the duty of Government to preserve order, it was also the duty of a Christian nation in occupation of a foreign country to govern it in the interests of the inhabitants, and, speaking for himself, he thought the executive authority would be strengthened, not weakened, by associating the people with the work of government. However this might be, the public could at least be sure that as long as the present Ministry remained in power it would countenance no policy on the part of its representatives that would outrage the moral, social, and, above all, religious sentiments of a Moslem people.