“I’ve come back rather hurriedly with some of Kyrlos’s sappers to get engineer stores. I didn’t think they’d get in for weeks and months at the rate they were going, and, having a brain wave or two, I talked with Kyrlos and Andros. Live man, Andros. The upshot was that I and my engineer pal--you know the funny bloke with the crooked nose--with twenty picked men left Shamantown day before yesterday _en route_ to Miletis. They’re spending the night at Aornos, but I thought I’d sleep here if Paulos could give me a shake-down and they can pick me up in the morning. Aryenis says she can fix me up all right: gone to see about it now.” “What are engineer stores in this country?” “Tell you in a fortnight’s time. You’ll be fit enough to sit a pony then, and can come and see the beano. If my calculations are right, it’ll be worth seeing. Hulloa, here’s Firoz come to make salaams.” Firoz, beaming all over, his steel cap adorned with a plume of cock’s feathers from a dead Shaman, and his waist girt with a gay-woven belt from a similar source, entered to pass the time of day and give me a lurid account of the war--a first-class article according to him. Wrexham borrowed Payindah to help him at Miletis. “I’d like to have both of them with me for the next ten days if you can spare him,” he said as Firoz went out. “Ask Aryenis. He’s her shadow nowadays. But if you speak kindly to her, she’ll let him go, I expect,” said I. Just then the lady came in to show Wrexham the room she had had fixed up for him. It was rather wasted, because he sat on my bed till long after midnight, telling me of all the “picnics” and “shows” that he and Henga had had. I could picture the pair together: they are very much of a type. Somewhere about ten o’clock Aryenis came in to say good-night to us, and despite John’s battle yarns my last waking moments were much more concerned with her than with any of his staccato stirring stories. As Aryenis said, “Toys all,” compared to other things: things like red-gold hair and hazel-grey eyes, slim white arms and warm red lips, for instance. CHAPTER XXIV I WIN MY BET The ten days following my first walk in the garden had passed all too quickly. My leg was now completely healed, although a trifle stiff, and a considerable hindrance in walking any distance. But there was no longer any need for the crutch with which I had made my début the day after Wrexham’s departure for Miletis, and, much as I was loath to admit it, no further actual necessity for Aryenis’s arm, which had aided my first dot-and-carry-one efforts round the little walled garden.