with a pleasant smile. "This chair isn't so
comfortable as the sand of the desert, but I must make it do. Now I'm
ready for business. What's the first thing to be done?"

"To make arrangements for your start at once," said Frank sharply. "You
will sail for Egypt, and make your preparations for going up the
country, and I shall go with you."

"Oh, you've settled that, have you?" said the professor, turning upon
the speaker, and pulling the fez a little more tightly on, for his stiff
hair had a disposition to thrust it off. "You two have been busy then,
eh, Bob?"

"Certainly not," said the doctor; "not a word has been said of this
before."

"That's right," said the professor. "Are you aware of what it will
cost, Frank?"

"No. A good deal, no doubt; but I have all that money to come when I am
of age, and there is Harry's. There ought to be no difficulty about the
executors advancing what is required."

"Bob and your humble servant being the said executors," said the
professor. "Of course not; but I did not mean money, Frank, I meant
life. It would cost yours."

"Well, I am ready to spend it," said the youth warmly, "so long as I can
save my brother's."

"Hah!" sighed the doctor.

"That's very nicely spoken, Frank," said the professor, leaning forward
to pat the young fellow on the arm, "but it's all sentiment."

"Sentiment?"

"Yes, and we want hard, matter-of-fact stuff. Now look at me."

"Well, I am looking at you," said Frank, half angrily.

"What do I look like?"

"Do you want the truth?"

"Of course, my boy."

"Well, you look like a Turk hard up in London, who has bought a
second-hand suit of English clothes that don't fit him."

The doctor threw himself back and roared with laughter, while the
professor joined silently in the mirth and then sat wiping his eyes, not
in the least offended.

"Well done, Frank!" he said. "You've hit the bull's-eye, boy. That's
exactly how I do look; and if I went to Cairo and put on a haik and
burnoose, and a few rolls of muslin round this fez, speaking Arabic as I
do, and a couple of the Soudan dialects, I could go anywhere with a
camel unquestioned. While as for you, my dear boy, you couldn't go a
mile. You'd be a Christian dog that every man would consider it his
duty to kill."

"I must risk that," said Frank stubbornly.

"Must you?" said the professor. "What do you say, Bob?"

"I say it would be madness," replied the doctor emphatically.