something to do.

Suddenly he turned away from the gate and went into the house to speak
to Lazarus. He found him in his dingy closet of a room on the fourth
floor at the back of the house.

"I am going for a walk," he announced to him. "Please tell my father if
he asks for me. He is busy, and I must not disturb him."

Lazarus was patching an old coat as he often patched things--even shoes
sometimes. When Marco spoke, he stood up at once to answer him. He was
very obstinate and particular about certain forms of manner. Nothing
would have obliged him to remain seated when Loristan or Marco was near
him. Marco thought it was because he had been so strictly trained as a
soldier. He knew that his father had had great trouble to make him lay
aside his habit of saluting when they spoke to him.

"Perhaps," Marco had heard Loristan say to him almost severely,
once when he had forgotten himself and had stood at salute while
his master passed through a broken-down iron gate before an equally
broken-down-looking lodging-house--"perhaps you can force yourself to
remember when I tell you that it is not safe--_it is not safe_! You put
us in danger!"

It was evident that this helped the good fellow to control himself.
Marco remembered that at the time he had actually turned pale, and had
struck his forehead and poured forth a torrent of Samavian dialect in
penitence and terror. But, though he no longer saluted them in public,
he omitted no other form of reverence and ceremony, and the boy had
become accustomed to being treated as if he were anything but the shabby