“No?” said Dick, highly diverted. “What a joke! Who is the faithful warner—young Anstruther?”
“Dick! As if I would ever let him say a word against you to me! No, it is all my Ethiopian ladies. They are firmly of opinion that marriage is a failure.”
“I hope you oppose them with all the ardour of a new convert, then?”
“I can’t convince them, unfortunately. Their arguments are unanswerable, they are their own husbands.”
“And you have no favourable counter-experience to draw upon?”
“No. I have to defend you on trust, Dick.”
“Poor little girl! and that’s very hard upon you, isn’t it, when you know so little of me, and what you do know is so bad?”
CHAPTER XVIII.
RETREAT CUT OFF.
Two or three days after Georgia’s visit to the Lady Nafiza, messengers from Rustam Khan reached the city, announcing that his expedition had been entirely successful, and that he was bringing back with him the servants and baggage-animals of which the travellers had been deprived. This was good news, and once more preparations for departure occupied all those in the Mission. But before the triumphant general had returned to the capital, and while Stratford and Dick were still superintending the packing of cases which it was necessary to pile up in the front courtyard until the means of transport arrived, Mr Hicks looked in to bid farewell to his English friends. His mules and camels had not been impounded, and he was therefore able to start on the morrow. Stratford was somewhat surprised that he did not defer his journey for a few days, and ask permission to attach himself to the Mission caravan; but Mr Hicks explained that he preferred to travel in comfort, and not to find all the inns occupied, and the markets cleared at every stopping-place along the route, by the train of the British Envoy. He did not add that he was calculating on bringing to Khemistan the first news respecting the Mission that had arrived since the interruption of communications, or that he anticipated driving an excellent bargain for himself and the paper he represented by the sale of the unique information he possessed; but he had a proposal to make to Stratford which rather surprised him.
“I guess you calculate on being able to make tracks in safety now, Mr Stratford, but I don’t know that I am quite with you there. I allow that you have had almighty luck, and that you have plucked the flower success from the nettle danger in a style I admire. A month ago I would have bet my bottom dollar that you would never leave Kubbet-ul-Haj without conducting another high-class funeral in that burial-lot of yours, and reading the Episcopal service over the old man, any way. But there’s real grit in you, sir, and I don’t mind making you a present of that acknowledgment before the general public throughout the universe gets hold of it in the columns of the ‘Crier.’ Still, I don’t consider that the prospect before you is exactly a shining one. It would have taxed Moses himself to fix your return trip satisfactorily. Once you get outside these walls, you will have to defend the whole outfit by the light of nature, for you have never been on the Plains, any of you.”