"Oh, those exquisite, those magnificent eyes of hers! Eh, sirs!"
he murmured suddenly, as waking from a dream.
"Oh, damn her eyes!" said Lord Fitz-Fulke languidly. "Tell you
what, old man, you're just gone on that girl!"
"Ha!" roared MeFeckless, springing to his feet, "ye will be using
such language of the bonniest"--
"You will excuse me, gentlemen," said Sir Midas,--who hated scenes
unless he had a trusted reporter with him,--"but I think it is time
for me to go upstairs and put on my Windsor uniform, which I find
exceedingly convenient for these mixed assemblies." He withdrew,
caressing his protuberant paunch with some dignity, as the two men
glanced fiercely at each other.
In another moment they might have sprung at each other's throats.
But luckily at this instant a curtain was pushed aside as if by
some waiting listener, and a thin man entered, dressed in cap and
gown,--which would have been simply academic but for his carrying
in one hand behind him a bundle of birch twigs. It was Dr. Haustus
Pilgrim, a noted London practitioner and specialist, dressed as "Ye
Olde-fashioned Pedagogue." He was presumably spending his holiday
on the Nile in a large dahabiyeh with a number of friends, among
whom he counted the two momentary antagonists he had just
interrupted; but those who knew the doctor's far-reaching knowledge
and cryptic researches believed he had his own scientific motives.
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