“Sir,” said Quong Ho, “if you desire to dispense with my personal services, which I have always regarded it as a privilege to render to my benefactor, may I dare to formulate an ambition which has hitherto been but an idle dream?”
Dr. Rewsby knitted his grizzled brows and dragged Baltazar away from the bed.
“Does he always talk like that?” he whispered.
“Did you think he would express himself with ‘Muchee likee topside,’ and that sort of thing?”
“No; but he talks like an archbishop.”
“Then perhaps,” grinned Baltazar, “you’ll understand why I’ve insisted on his being treated as my closest friend.”
He returned to the bed. “I’m sorry, Quong Ho. What’s this famous ambition of yours?”
Quong Ho looked up at him unsmiling, with a dog-like yearning in his slanting eyes.
“If I could obtain the mathematical degree of the University of Cambridge——”
“If you went in for the Tripos now, you would wipe the floor with everybody.—Cambridge! That’s a wonderful idea.” He stuck his hands behind him in the waistband of his trousers and strode about for a moment or two, his eyes illuminated. “A splendid notion! You can begin where I leave off. I’ll work up all the stuff that’s gone, and put it into your hands, and you’ll continue my life’s work. By God! you’ll consummate it. Cambridge! The very thing! Damn China! Any fool can teach young China the Binomial Theorem and Trigonometry. But there’s only one Quong Ho, the pupil and intellectual heir of John Baltazar, in the world. Yes. You’ll go to Cambridge, and by the Lord Harry! won’t there be fluttering of dovecotes!”