Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt — Volume 3Parker, Gilbert
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Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt — Volume 3
Parker, Gilbert
Egypt -- Fiction; Short stories
And he did not apologise for paraphrasing the famous ballad. He has
shamed Egypt at last into admiration for Wyndham bimbashi: to the deep
satisfaction of Hassan, the Soudanese boy, who received his fifty pounds,
and to this day wears the belt which once kept him in the narrow path of
duty.
A TYRANT AND A LADY
When Donovan Pasha discovered the facts for the first time, he found more
difficulty in keeping the thing to himself than he had ever found with
any other matter in Egypt. He had unearthed one of those paradoxes which
make for laughter--and for tears. It gave him both; he laughed till he
cried. Then he went to the Khedivial Club and ordered himself four
courses, a pint of champagne and a glass of '48 port, his usual dinner
being one course, double portion, and a pint of claret. As he sat eating
he kept reading a letter over and over, and each time he read he grinned
--he did not smile like a well-behaved man of the world, he did not
giggle like a well-veneered Egyptian back from Paris, he chuckled
like a cabman responding to a liberal fare and a good joke. A more
unconventional little man never lived. Simplicity was his very life,
and yet he had a gift for following the sinuosities of the Oriental mind;
he had a quality almost clairvoyant, which came, perhaps, from his Irish
forebears. The cross-strain of English blood had done him good too; it
made him punctilious and kept his impulses within secure bounds. It also
made him very polite when he was angry, and very angry when any one tried
to impose upon him, or flatter him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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