-stems, his body was like a board, but he was
straight enough, not unsoldierly, nor so bad to look at when his back
was on you; but when he showed his face you had little pleasure in him.
It seemed made of brown putty, the nose was like india-rubber, and the
eyes had that dull, sullen look of a mongrel got of a fox-terrier and a
bull-dog. Like this sort of mongrel also his eyes turned a brownish-red
when he was excited.

You could always tell when something had gone wrong with Ibrahim the
Orderly, by that curious dull glare in his eyes. Selamlik Pasha said
to Fielding that it was hashish; Fielding said it was a cross breed of
Soudanese and fellah. But little Dicky Donovan said it was something
else, and he kept his eye upon Ibrahim. And Dicky, with all his faults,
could screw his way from the front of a thing to the back thereof like
no other civilised man you ever knew. But he did not press his opinions
upon Fielding, who was an able administrator and a very clever fellow
also, with a genial habit of believing in people who served him: and
that is bad in the Orient.

As an orderly Ibrahim was like a clock: stiff in his gait as a pendulum,
regular as a minute. He had no tongue for gossip either, so far as
Fielding knew. Also, five times a day he said his prayers--an unusual
thing for a Gippy soldier-servant; for as the Gippy's rank increases he
soils his knees and puts his forehead in the dust with discretion. This
was another reason why Dicky suspected him.

It was supposed that Ibrahim could not speak a word of English; and
he seemed so stupid, he looked so blank, when English was spoken, that
Fielding had no doubt the English language was a Tablet of Abydos to
him. But Dicky was more wary, and waited. He could be very patient and
simple, and his delicate face seemed as innocent as a girl's when he
said to Ibrahim one morning: "Ibrahim, brother of scorpions, I'm going
to teach you English!" and, squatting like a Turk on the deck of the
Amenhotep, the stern-wheeled tub which Fielding called a steamer, he
began to teach Ibrahim.

"Say 'Good-morning, kind sir,'" he drawled.

No tongue was ever so thick, no throat so guttural, as Ibrahim's when he
obeyed this command. That was why suspicion grew the more in the mind
of Dicky. But he made the Gippy say: "Good-morning, kind sir," over and
over again. Now, it was a peculiar thing that Ibrahim's pronunciation
grew worse every time; which goes to show that a combination o