grew worse every time; which goes to show that a combination of Soudanese
and fellah doesn't make a really clever villain. Twice, three times,
Dicky gave him other words and phrases to say, and practice made Ibrahim
more perfect in error.

Dicky suddenly enlarged the vocabulary thus: "An old man had three sons:
one was a thief, another a rogue, and the worst of them all was a
soldier. But the soldier died first!"

As he said these words he kept his eyes fixed on Ibrahim in a smiling,
juvenile sort of way; and he saw the colour--the brownish-red colour--
creep slowly into Ibrahim's eyes. For Ibrahim's father had three sons:
and certainly one was a thief, for he had been a tax-gatherer; and one
was a rogue, for he had been the servant of a Greek money-lender; and
Ibrahim was a soldier!

Ibrahim was made to say these words over and over again, and the red fire
in his eyes deepened as Dicky's face lighted up with what seemed a mere
mocking pleasure, a sort of impish delight in teasing, like that of a
madcap girl with a yokel. Each time Ibrahim said the words he jumbled
them worse than before. Then Dicky asked him if he knew what an old man
was, and Ibrahim said no. Dicky said softly in Arabic that the old man
was a fool to have three such sons--a thief and a rogue and a soldier.
With a tender patience he explained what a thief and a rogue were, and
his voice was curiously soft when he added, in Arabic: "And the third son
was like you, Mahommed--and he died first."

Ibrahim's eyes gloomed under the raillery--under what he thought the
cackle of a detested Inglesi with a face like a girl, of an infidel who
had a tongue that handed you honey on the point of a two-edged sword.