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“I—I believe so. I generally do.”

“If you get orders to leave Alibad in an hour, can you forsake everything, and be ready for the march? That’s what I mean. If I find it necessary to send you down, go you must. Can you make yourself useful? Oh, I daresay you can do pretty things like most young ladies, but can you put yourself at the surgeon’s disposal after a fight, and be some good?”

“I would try,” said Penelope humbly. It was before Miss Nightingale’s days, and the suggestion sounded very strange to her. Major Keeling stood looking at her, until his black brows relaxed suddenly.

“All right, you can come,” he said. “And,” he added, as he left the room, “I’ll allow you a camel apiece after all.”

“What an interesting-looking man Major Keeling is!” said Penelope to her friend the next morning.

“Some people think so. I don’t particularly admire that kind of swarthy picturesqueness myself,” was the meditative answer. “I won’t praise him to her on any account,” said Lady Haigh to herself.

“It’s not that so much as his look and his voice. Don’t you know——”