more. He had no objection, he said, to the army's being increased so long as the estimates were not exceeded. He thought, however, the sum proposed would suffice for an increase up to 15,000 men. I consequently went to Arabi and argued the matter with him and others of the officers; and persuaded them, on my assurance that Colvin's word could be trusted, to withdraw all further objection. They said they would accept the increased sum of £522,000 as sufficient, and make it go as far in the increase of soldiers as it could. They meant to economize, they said, in other ways, and hoped to get their full complement of men out of the balance. They promised me, too, on this occasion to have patience and make no further armed demonstrations, a promise which to the end they faithfully fulfilled. Arabi's last words to me on this occasion were "men sabber dhaffer," "he who has patience conquers." I sent a note the same day to Colvin informing him of the result, and I was also thanked by Malet for having helped them both out of a considerable difficulty.
Nevertheless Malet, about a week later, surprised me one afternoon, 28th December, when I had been playing lawn tennis with him, as I often did at the Agency, by showing me the draft of a despatch he had just sent to the Foreign Office mentioning my visit to Egypt and the encouragement I had given to the Nationalists, and without mentioning what I had done to help him, complaining only of my having sent the Program against his wishes to the "Times." As we had up to that moment been acting in perfect cordiality together, and nothing whatever had occurred beyond the publication of the manifesto, I took him pretty roundly to task for his ill faith in concealing my other services rendered to his diplomacy, and insisted that he should cancel this misleading despatch, and with such energy that he wrote in my presence a cancelling telegram, and also a second despatch repairing in some measure the injustice he had done me. I have never quite understood what Malet's motive was in this curious manœuvre. I took it at the time to be a passing fit of jealousy, a dislike to the idea that it should be known at the Foreign Office that he owed anything to me in the comparatively good relations he had succeeded in