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"We have tasted your absence and found it bitter, Mahommed," Dimsdale answered in kind, with a touch of plaintive humour, letting the envelope fall from his fingers on the bed, so little was he interested in any fresh move of Imshi Pasha. "More tricks," he said to himself between his teeth. "Shall I open it, effendi? It is the word that thy life shall carry large plumes."
"I may be a fool, my dear," Dimsdale said after her; "but you might say the same of the Pasha who sent you here." Dimsdale was angry for a moment, and he said some hard words of Imshi Pasha as he watched the two decoys hurry away into the dusk. He thought it nothing more serious than an attempt to know of what stuff he was made.
Imshi Pasha saw that Dimsdale was a dangerous man, as all enthusiasts are, no matter how right-headed; but it comforted him to think that many a reformer, from Amenhotep down, had, as it were, cut his own throat in the Irrigation Department.
Therefore Imshi Pasha, being a wise man and a deep-dyed official who had never yet seen the triumph of the reformer and the honest Aryan, took Dimsdale's hands and said suddenly, with a sorrowful break in his voice: "Behold, my friend, to tell the whole truth as God gives it, it is time you have come. Egypt has waited for you the man who sees and knows. I have watched you for two years.
He seemed to think it was his own indomitable patience, the work that he had done, and his reports, which had at last shamed the Egyptian Government and the Caisse de la Dette into doing the right thing for the country and to him. He was dumfounded when Fielding replied: "Not much, my Belisarius. As Imshi Pasha always was, so he will be to the end.
The donk rapidly absorbed three bottles, while the distracted "Gyppies" tugged and wailed, "No gude! No gude! Finish Noo Zealand!" to which the only reply was "Imshi Yallah, you black devils." At this stage the little beast, an animal of rather miserable dimensions, with a large, rotund centrepiece, escaped and wobbled ridiculously down the street.
He knew neither amusement nor society, for every waking hour was spent in the study of the Nile and what the Nile might do. After one of his journeys up the Nile, Imshi Pasha, the Minister of the Interior, said to him: "Ah, my dear friend, with whom be peace and power, what have you seen as you travel?"
Dimsdale was well-nigh taken off his feet. It seemed too wonderful to be true a free hand in Egypt, and under Imshi Pasha, the one able Minister of them all, who had, it was said, always before resisted the irrigation schemes of the foreigners, who believed only in the corroee and fate! Dimsdale rejoiced that at the beginning of his career he had so inspired the powerful one with confidence.
It wasn't Imshi Pasha, and it wasn't English influence, and it wasn't the Caisse de la Dette, each by its lonesome, or all together by initiative." "What was it who was it, then?" inquired Dimsdale breathlessly. "Was it you? I know you've worked for me. It wasn't backsheesh anyhow. But Imshi Pasha didn't turn honest and patriotic for nothing I know that."
But why should Imshi Pasha send the girl and his mouffetish on this miserable mission? Was not Imshi Pasha his friend? Quietly smoking his cigarette, he said to the man: "You may go, Mahommed Melik; I have had enough. Take your harem with you," he added quickly. The man scarcely stirred a muscle, the woman flushed deeply.
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