And in this the tone of the two men was sufficiently typical of
them. The first, who was a certain Captain Boyle, was of a bold and
boyish type, dark, and with a sort of native heat in his face that
did not belong to the atmosphere of the East, but rather to the
ardors and ambitions of the West. The other was an older man and
certainly an older resident, a civilian official--Horne Fisher; and
his drooping eyelids and drooping light mustache expressed all the
paradox of the Englishman in the East. He was much too hot to be
anything but cool.
Neither of them thought it necessary to mention what it was that was
splendid. That would indeed have been superfluous conversation about
something that everybody knew. The striking victory over a menacing
combination of Turks and Arabs in the north, won by troops under the
command of Lord Hastings, the veteran of so many striking victories,
was already spread by the newspapers all over the Empire, let alone
to this small garrison so near to the battlefield.
"Now, no other nation in the world could have done a thing like
that," cried Captain Boyle, emphatically.
Horne Fisher was still looking silently into the well; a moment
later he answered: "We certainly have the art of unmaking mistakes.
That's where the poor old Prussians went wrong.
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