Florentine sailor of the fifteenth
century, which enabled him to show his magnificent calves quite as well
as in his native highland dress, and who had added with characteristic
noble pride a sporran to his costume, was lolling on another divan.

"Oh, those exquisite, those magnificent eyes of hers! Eh, sirs!" he
murmured suddenly, as waking from a dream.

"Oh, damn her eyes!" said Lord Fitz-Fulke languidly. "Tell you what,
old man, you're just gone on that girl!"

"Ha!" roared McFeckless, springing to his feet, "ye will be using such
language of the bonniest"--

"You will excuse me, gentlemen," said Sir Midas,--who hated scenes
unless he had a trusted reporter with him,--"but I think it is time for
me to go upstairs and put on my Windsor uniform, which I find
exceedingly convenient for these mixed assemblies." He withdrew,
caressing his protuberant paunch with some dignity, as the two men
glanced fiercely at each other.

In another moment they might have sprung at each other's throats. But
luckily at this instant a curtain was pushed aside as if by some
waiting listener, and a thin man entered, dressed in cap and
gown,--which would have been simply academic but for his carrying in
one hand behind him a bundle of birch twigs. It was Dr. Haustus
Pilgrim, a noted London practitioner and specialist, dressed as "Ye
Olde-fashioned Pedagogue." He was presumably spending his holiday on
the Nile in a large dahabiyeh with a number of friends, among whom he
counted the two momentary antagonists he had just interrupted; but
those who knew the doctor's far-reaching knowledge and cryptic
researches believed he had his own scientific motives.

The two men turned quickly as he entered; the angry light faded from
their eyes, and an awed and respectful submission to the intruder took
its place. He walked quietly toward them, put a lozenge in the mouth
of one and felt the pulse of the other, gazing critically at both.

"We will be all right in a moment," he said with professional
confidence.

"I say!" said Fitz-Fulke, gazing at the doctor's costume, "you look
dooced smart in those togs, don'tcherknow."

"They suit me," said the doctor, with a playful swish of his birch
twigs, at which the two grave men shuddered. "But you were speaking of
somebody's beautiful eyes."

"The Princess Zut-Ski's," returned McFeckless eagerly; "and this daft
callant said"--

"He didn't like them," put in Fitz-Fulke promptly.

"Ha!" said