“And of course he was glad to go? It must have been like going back to his old ways again,” said Cecil. Lady Haigh turned upon her a look of scorn.
“Charlie has quite given up his old wandering ways,” she said, “and no one ought to know that better than you, Cecil. He has settled down into steady work, and gets on splendidly with Sir Dugald. Of course he was glad to get the medical experience involved in this journey—I won’t pretend he wasn’t. But he was most unwilling to go just when you were coming home; in fact,” added Lady Haigh, forgetting her previous laudation of Charlie’s steady work, “it was all I could do to keep him from throwing up the whole thing, and he is determined to be back by Christmas.”
Lady Haigh might have told much more if she had wished to do so, but she was a discreet woman, and was rarely tempted into obscuring a general effect by excess of detail. Charlie had not accepted the fact of his temporary exile by any means in a spirit of resignation, and his long-suffering cousin had had to endure a good deal before he finally departed. His chief objection to leaving his post had been the possibility that some epidemic might break out in his absence, and sweep away the whole European population of Baghdad; but Lady Haigh pooh-poohed his anxiety, and assured him that the surgeon of the Nausicaa was fully competent to fill his place.
“And you know, Charlie,” she said, “this appointment will bring you before the public, and may do you a great deal of good. It is a thing after your own heart, and you ought to be grateful for it.”
“What I am thinking of, Cousin Elma,” he replied, solemnly, “is that if I am away at Christmas, I may lose everything that would make all this any good to me.”
“My dear boy, what can you mean?” asked Lady Haigh, revolving various possibilities in her mind. “Oh, I know!” she cried at last. “You mean that Cecil’s first two years at Baghdad will be over a day or two before Christmas, and that she can’t go on without signing a new agreement?”
“And that before she signs it I am to have my chance,” added Charlie.
“Yes, of course,” said Lady Haigh, hastily. “You have been a very good boy, Charlie, and obeyed me splendidly, but lately I have noticed a sort of I-bide-my-time air about you, which didn’t look well. You shall have your chance, certainly, but I wouldn’t advise you to be too sure about it.”
“I am not,” said Charlie, “but I mean to have it.”
“Well, my dear boy,” went on his cousin, soothingly, “travelling as lightly as you do, you will be well able to be back before Christmas, you see. The new agreement need not be signed until Christmas Eve, and if you are not back then it will be your own fault.”