“A nice sort of revolver Miss Keeling will get hold of, with no one to help her choose it!” said Dick, evading the question.
“She has got a beauty, which Sir Dugald chose for her, and Lady Haigh has one exactly like it,” said Mabel, triumphantly.
“But why doesn’t she wait to practise with it until we are at sea? It gives one something to do on board ship.”
“Oh, I daresay she will go on practising then, but she means to get over the first difficulties now. And besides, I want to see whether it’s really true that you can’t fire without shutting your eyes at the beginning. But, at any rate, I thought you and Mr Stratford were going to travel by the overland route, so that you will lose a good bit of the voyage?”
“That is something to be thankful for, in any case. I should say that the members of the Mission will not be exactly a happy family.”
“Well, if they aren’t, I shall know where to look for the disturbing element. By the bye, I ought not to have told you yesterday that Georgie would marry no one but the surgeon of some big hospital. I heard her say to-day that she respected a man for himself, and not for his profession, or something of that sort.”
“Highly interesting, no doubt, and creditable to Miss Keeling’s breadth of mind, but I don’t quite see what the information has to do with me.”
“Nor do I at the present moment. It is merely one of those valuable bits of knowledge which every one ought to treasure up, because they are sure to come in useful some day. How do I know that some time or other you will not thank me with tears in your eyes for just those few words?”
This was the last conversation that Mabel held with Dick on the subject of Miss Keeling before his departure, for she was a discerning young woman, and felt satisfied to leave to time the further growth and development of the seeds she had sown. Moreover, there was little further opportunity for initiating the elaborate preliminaries necessary to lead up to the discussion of a subject on which Dick was resolved not to enter; for the larger division of the Kubbet-ul-Haj party, consisting of Sir Dugald and Lady Haigh, Georgia, Dr Headlam, and Fitz Anstruther, left England in the course of the next week, while only three days later Dick and Mr Stratford started on their journey across Europe to the southern port at which they were to meet the ship.
As travelling companions the two suited one another admirably. They had the wholesome respect for each other’s powers which a month of successful big game shooting together in rough country is wont to engender, and they differed sufficiently in character to give their intercourse a spice of variety. Mr Stratford was a man after Sir Dugald Haigh’s own heart. He had risen rapidly in the Diplomatic Service, until, at the time when the idea of a Mission to Ethiopia was first mooted, he held a responsible position in the British Embassy at Czarigrad. It showed the importance attached to this Mission by the Government, that a man of his standing had been appointed to accompany it, but Sir Dugald, who had made his acquaintance in the East, had requested that he should be chosen. He was an excellent linguist, with all his chief’s powers of diplomacy, but with far more talent for society than Sir Dugald possessed, and with a capacity for self-effacement which seemed to Dick sometimes to amount almost to a double personality. His wild, open-air life among a wild people had not tended to teach Dick to conceal his thoughts, but he had succeeded well enough among his unruly frontiersmen, who felt greater respect for the long arm which could deal a distant and unexpected blow than for a tongue distilling all the wisdom of the ages.