show!" He sniffed at the bottle. "But that stain won't come off
if you do wash--never worry! You'll do finely."

"Not yet, I won't!" said Athelstan, picking up a little safety razor
and beginning on his mustache. In a minute he had his upper lip bare.
Then his brother bent over him and rubbed in stain where the scrubby
mustache had been.

After that Athelstan unlocked the leather bag that had caused Ismail
so much concern and shook out from it a pile of odds and ends at
which his brother nodded with perfect understanding. The principal
item was a piece of silk--forty or fifty yards of it--that he
proceeded to bind into a turban on his head, his brother lending
him a guiding, understanding finger at every other turn. When that
was done, the man who had said he looked in the least like a British
officer would have lied.

One after another he drew on native garments, picking them from
the pile beside him. So, by rapid stages he developed into a native
hakim--by creed a converted Hindu, like Rewa Gunga,--one of the
men who practise yunani, or modern medicine, without a license and
with a very great deal of added superstition, trickery and guesswork.

"I wouldn't trust you with a ha'penny!" announced his brother when
he had done.

"Really? As good as all that?"

"The part to a T."