"I'm tolerably tough myself; and I'll change
with the gentleman. The chances are that I shall not be in a very
liberal humour when I reach Jaffa with stiff limbs and a sore skin.
I have a very good memory, Joseph."
"I'll take thirty shillings, Mr. Jones; though I shall have to groan
all the way like a condemned devil."
I struck a bargain with him at last for five-and-twenty, and set him
to work to make the necessary change on the horses. "It will be
just the same thing to him," I said to Smith. "I find that he is as
much used to one as to the other."
"But how much money are you to pay him?" he asked. "Oh, nothing," I
replied. "Give him a few piastres when you part with him at Jaffa."
I do not know why I should have felt thus inclined to pay money out
of my pocket for this Smith,--a man whom I had only seen for the
first time on the preceding evening, and whose temperament was so
essentially different from my own; but so I did. I would have done
almost anything in reason for his comfort; and yet he was a
melancholy fellow, with good inward pluck as I believed, but without
that outward show of dash and hardihood which I confess I love to
see.
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