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Pyramids, for instance, or anywhere outside town? I haven’t seen anything of this place.”

“You could ask,” said Tony. His big grey eyes were wide open now, and a gleam had lightened their dreariness.

“Well, you go off now, and I’ll speak at the office as soon as I’m dressed. I wish it wasn’t so early.”

Tony’s laugh sounded again, just as short as before, but with more mirth in it. “Early! I’ve been up five hours.”

“Five—But, I say, that’s slavery. What time do you go to bed?”

“Any time, after twelve.”

“Humph! Be off and pick up your boots—I’ll see about it all; don’t you worry.”

Tony delivered the other boots quickly, having acquired new energy. He did not worry; in fact, he did not think much while he was doing it, except to wonder that nobody had “gone for him” for being late. That came after, when he went downstairs, but with this new hope to feed on he was well able to bear it.

It was not hard for Robertson to get Tony’s permission of absence from the manager, who was all smiles and affability. He offered a wide choice of guides, all infinitely superior to Tony, but Robertson stood firm. He wanted to atone to the child for having attacked him that morning; he still felt a bully when he thought of it, and that was all the time; for the moment it had quite cleared his other worries away. The boy—by the way, he had never asked his name!—was interesting. He had taken the tongue-lashing as a matter of course, and yet he had shrunk back suggestively when he was first spoken to. He looked half starved too—and what ungodly hours for a kid to work! As if a baby of that age-he looked about nine, though his face was old enough for sixteen—ought to be working at all. . . . It was disgusting that such a state of things should be possible in a decent hotel. . . . He had a gentle-