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East followed sedately in a carriage with the elderly Greek interpreter, and Miss Hassett-Bean, who also fancied the idea of a Sicilian lap-dog, to replace the lamented Marmoset. Everything glittered at Asiut.
"Poor, dear old gentleman!" sighed Miss Hassett-Bean. "I shall never be able to forget him. When I'm out of this awful country of cannibals, and safe in my own home, he will simply haunt me, passing his respectable old age, black though he is, chasing across deserts on camels, wrapped in a blanket and covered with chicken coops, at the mercy of any queer Christian who can afford to pay for him.
But hardly were the words out of my mouth when there was a waving as if in a wind-swept wheatfield Place aux dames! I called upon Miss Hassett-Bean to begin. She rustled silkily up, bowing to me, then directing an acetylene glare upon Colonel Corkran's end of the room.
I fancy she thinks a sandcart the best modern substitute for a chariot; and at worst, it ought to be as comfortable. Slaney has promised a yellow one cart, not horse. The horse, by request, is to be white. The other ladies are having camels. I daren't think of Miss Hassett-Bean at the end of the week. The men, also, will camel.
It was a moment of suspense, for neither liked the other at first sight. The camel began to gurgle its throat in a threatening manner, and at the same time to rise. Miss Hassett-Bean, staring into two quivering nostrils shaped like badly made purses, shrieked, forgot whether she must first bend forward or bend back, bent in the way she ought not to have bent, and fell upon the sand.
To make Miss Hassett-Bean and Cleopatra forget the smarting of their eyes, I told them what a true-sand-storm was like, and how its names in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian all came from the fiend "Samiel," who destroyed caravans, just as "devil" came from the Persian "div." Our little breeze was from the east, which at Thebes in old days was considered lucky.
It was but too clearly indicated by the bands of pilgrims, going or returning. And among the latter were those whom Monny callously referred to as "poor Lord Ernest's crowd." Miss Hassett-Bean and the Biddell girls made us linger, with sand trickling over the tops of our shoes, while they poured into our ears their impressions of the Sphinx.
And as for Egypt being now the land of Veiled Women, where Suffragettes find no sympathy, I've heard that the prophet's order for veiling has been purposely misconstrued by tyrannical men, with their usual jealousy. Even Mohammed himself was jealous." With this Miss Hassett-Bean sat down, amid fitful applause; and at my earnest request, Miss Enid Biddell, the prettier twin, stood bravely up.
On the contrary, though he pretends not to notice camels, cows, or buffaloes, he whinnies and prances with delight when he meets anything of his own shape, and assumes hobby-horse attitudes, much to the alarm of Cleopatra and Miss Hassett-Bean. Also, just to remind everybody that sand is his element, he shies at water, and almost swoons at sight of the Fayoum light railway. Much wind again.
It was a shock to see Monny wave my handkerchief away with a gesture of horror, and bury her face in a far inferior one tendered by Anthony. "No wonder!" exclaimed Miss Hassett-Bean, who is not, as a rule, a Monny-ite. "You're quite right, Miss Gilder. Lord Ernest Borrow, I don't see much difference between you and a murderer!" For a minute, I did not know what she meant.
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