Page:The little blue devil (IA littlebluedevil00mackiala).pdf/35

The Hôtel Lafayette was large and, for a Cairo hotel, ill-manned. Tony probably worked harder than anyone there, except the manager, for he had no fixed place and was at the orders of the lazy regiment of servants. They employed their privilege to the full; it was something to have a Frank to serve you, even such a little one as that. So Tony’s hours of work stretched out and his sleep-time diminished, and his meals were snatched at odd and unsatisfactory moments, when they were not missed altogether, till he was wearied past speech, and yet winced at a footfall.

The weeks drew on till the season was practically ended, but his work did not slacken. There were fewer servants, but those that remained were just as ready to order him about. The management had forgotten the existence of its small slave, lost in the kitchen or flitting ghost-like down the passages in the dawn, gathering the boots and shoes before each door.

His principal work was blacking boots in the morning and washing dishes at night. He did quite as much as the four boys who were retained as bootblacks, not from love of labour, but out of prudence. They were all bigger than he. He dreaded facing the ring of grinning faces in the basecourt at meal-times, faces with latent cruelty in nearly all of them, and pity in none. They hated him as he hated them, for they could not get much sport out of him. But he was being slowly cowed, all the same; his meals were