"Say, Saadat, think of it: a bed with four feet, and linen sheets, and sleeping till any time in the morning, and, If you please, sir, breakfast's on the table.' Say, it's great, and we're in it!" David smiled. "Thee did very well, friend, without such luxuries. Thee is not skin and bone." Lacey mopped his forehead. "Well, I've put on a layer or two since the relief. It's being scared that takes the flesh off me. I never was intended for the 'stricken field.' Poetry and the hearth-stone was my real vocation--and a bit of silver mining to blow off steam with," he added with a chuckle. David laughed and tapped his arm. "That is an old story now, thy cowardice. Thee should be more original. "It's worth not being original, Saadat, to hear you thee and thou me as you used to do. It's like old times--the oldest, first times. You've changed a lot, Saadat." "Not in anything that matters, I hope." "Not in anything that matters to any one that matters. To me it's the same as it ever was, only more so. It isn't that, for you are you. But you've had disappointment, trouble, hard nuts to crack, and all you could do to escape the rocks being rolled down the Egyptian hill onto you; and it's left its mark." "Am I grown so different?" Lacey's face shone under the look that was turned towards him. "Say, Saadat, you're the same old red sandstone; but I missed the thee and thou. I sort of hankered after it; it gets me where I'm at home with myself." David laughed drily. "Well, perhaps I've missed something in you. Thee never says now--not since thee went south a year ago, 'Well, give my love to the girls.' Something has left its mark, friend," he added teasingly; for his spirits were boyish to-day; he was living in the present. There had gone from his eyes and from the lines of his figure the melancholy which Hylda had remarked when he was in England. "Well, now, I never noticed," rejoined Lacey. "That's got me. Looks as if I wasn't as friendly as I used to be, doesn't it? But I am--I am, Saadat." "I thought that the widow in Cairo, perhaps--" Lacey chuckled. "Say, perhaps it was--cute as she can be, maybe, wouldn't like it, might be prejudiced." Suddenly David turned sharply to Lacey. "Thee spoke of silver mining just now. I owe thee something like two hundred thousand pounds, I think--Egypt and I." Lacey winked whimsically at himself under the rim of his helmet. "Are you drawing back from those concessions, Saadat?" he asked with apparent ruefulness. "Drawing back? No! But does thee think they are worth--" Lacey assumed an injured air. "If a man that's made as much money as me can't be trusted to look after a business proposition--" "Oh, well, then!" "Say, Saadat, I don't want you to think I've taken a mean advantage of you; and if--"