After a few moments he suddenly realized that he had pulled on his socks, as though he were going, there and then, at midnight, to plunge into the midst of the bewildering world at war. CHAPTER X QUONG HO sitting up, taking plentiful nourishment and definitely pronounced out of danger, Baltazar presented his cheque for a thousand pounds to Dr. Rewsby, and thanked God for the preservation of Quong Ho’s life and his own fortune. He also listened with much interest to Quong Ho’s apologetics for leaving him in ignorance of the war. For such exact obedience and perfect fidelity reproaches would have been unjust, even had remorse for his own folly not have precluded them. “And now, my dear fellow,” said he—he was sitting by the bed in the airy, sun-filled ward of the Cottage Hospital—“tell me what you would like to do.” “I don’t care what he would like to do,” said Dr. Rewsby. “What he has got to do is to stay here quiet and recover from the shock and mend up, and not worry his mind with the war, or mathematics, or the condition of your underclothes.” “Quong Ho shall never wash a shirt of mine again,” declared Baltazar. “Henceforth he is the master of his destiny. I’m talking not of now, but of the future. So far as I can manage it, he can do what he jolly well likes. That’s why I put the question to him. So, Quong Ho, never mind this excellent medicine man, who can’t see beyond his nose and doesn’t want to, because all he’s concerned with is getting you well—never mind him, but tell me what most in the world you would like to do.” “Sir,” said Quong Ho, “if you desire to dispense with my personal services, which I have always regarded it as a privilege to render to my benefactor, may I dare to formulate an ambition which has hitherto been but an idle dream?” Dr. Rewsby knitted his grizzled brows and dragged Baltazar away from the bed. “Does he always talk like that?” he whispered. “Did you think he would express himself with ‘Muchee likee topside,’ and that sort of thing?” “No; but he talks like an archbishop.” “Then perhaps,” grinned Baltazar, “you’ll understand why I’ve insisted on his being treated as my closest friend.” He returned to the bed. “I’m sorry, Quong Ho. What’s this famous ambition of yours?” Quong Ho looked up at him unsmiling, with a dog-like yearning in his slanting eyes. “If I could obtain the mathematical degree of the University of Cambridge——”