In the Mahdi's Grasp

On the other side of the dining-room door Doctor Morris, a thoughtful-looking man of goodly presence, and the better looking for a calm ignorance of his being handsome, was seated opposite to his thin, yellow-skinned, and rather withered, nervous-looking old college friend, both partaking slowly of the good things the doctor’s domestic had prepared for them, as if it came perfectly natural to them to follow out the proverbial words of the old Greek philosopher who bade his pupils, “Live not to eat, but eat to live.”

As Sam had truthfully said, they had been talking very learnedly about their investigations in the particular branches of science which they had followed up since their old school and college days when they had begun their friendship, in company with another companion, missing now; and the doctor had said, with a far-off look in his large dark eyes—

“No, Fred, old chap, I don’t want to settle down here yet, because I know how it will be. Once I regularly begin, the practice will completely swallow me, as it did the dear old dad. People came from far and wide to be treated by him, and he had hardly an hour to call his own. Of course I shall be glad to do the same, for it’s a duty to one’s fellow-creatures; but I want to leave it all to old Stanley for another two or three years while I travel and see more of the world. I should like to go with some army if I could.”