“I will show you,” I said, as we were all assembled for farewell, “that I am right, and you are _all_ wrong. Though my country may turn on Turkey, she will be good to me.” * * * * * It was nearly seven o’clock next morning before the officer came for me. It was so late that our horses had to be whipped up to a smart pace over the bumpy road to the station. My conductor had been so anxious about all arrangements, that he had packed the food for our five or seven days’ trip, and entrusted it to a chauffeur, who was perverse enough not to wake up in time. This certainly might be regarded as an omen of ill-luck, and even as I got into the train, between the officer and a cheik (who had been professor of Arabic at Oxford), the South American stepped forward to ask whether, after all, I had not better return with him. “And show the Turks I do not trust them.... Never. Besides, this gentleman has lived in Oxford, and is therefore almost a compatriot. Tell my friends in Smyrna that I am perfectly well and happy, and that I am going to have a lovely time.” I saw that both my conductors were greatly pleased by my expressions of trust, which they well knew how to appreciate. Nevertheless, when we had been driving along the quay and my eyes had fallen on our own man-of-war flying the Union Jack without which, for the first time in my life, I was embarking upon my perilous way, I was not far from tears. My thoughts were crowded with all that England has ever meant to me, from the quiet corner in the churchyard where my father is sleeping, to the little face, seldom innocent of jam, that looks up so eagerly to tell his “Auntie” he has been a naughty boy. Shall I, indeed, soon find myself in an “enemy” country, which surely should be, as I have always known it, the land of my England’s dearest friends? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VIII EMOTIONS AND IMPRESSIONS—“ON THE WAY.”—NOWHERE TO HOUSE THE POOR PEOPLE IT was, indeed, a kindly Providence that led the cheik to accompany us upon this stage of my tour. No one could have been more polite and thoughtful, more ready to gratify my every wish at great personal sacrifice, than the officer from Smyrna. But he had not been at Oxford; he could not speak our language with the distinguished accent of that University; above all, he had not the vast culture of this man of God. His information would have been conveyed in German, a language I speak with _no_ pleasure.