AT CAIRO.]

You stare at them in a puzzled way a minute or so, and then declare,
"What a stuffy arrangement! I'm not going to sleep shut in like that!"

"Please yourself, but you run the risk of having red lumps on your nose
in the morning if a mosquito takes a fancy to you!"

"Oh, they're mosquito-curtains! I've heard of them. What are you going
to do?"

"Run no risks!"

At last, protesting, you agree to do likewise, and climb inside your
meat-safe. You'll soon get used to it, and though it is too cold here
for any mosquito to be very lively, it is safer. In some countries
the curtains are useful for keeping off worse things than
mosquitoes--tarantulas, for instance!

We are only staying one day in Cairo so are out early the next morning,
and find that the town looks on the whole very like a French town.
Indeed, were it not for the red fez or tarboush which so many men wear,
even when they dress otherwise in European costume, and for the turbans
and flowing robes of the native dress, we might be in Paris or
Marseilles.

We go to the top of a very wide main street to await the tram which is
to take us to the Pyramids.

"Poste-carte, sir-r-r-r," says insinuatingly a ragged ruffian, thrusting
vividly coloured picture postcards into our faces as we stand. We turn
away, shaking our heads. He quickly runs round to face us again,
"Poste-carte, sir-r-r," in a tone as if the conversation had only just
begun and he had great hopes of a sale.

[Illustration: "POSTE-CARTE AND BEADES," CAIRO.]

"No, thank you; go away," I say as sternly and emphatically as I can,
for he is not too clean.

"Poste-carte, Cismus cards, nice," he continues with unabated zeal as if
we had not spoken at all. Resolutely we turn our backs on him and are
confronted by a very gorgeous individual in a long loose gown and
turban, with innumerable strings of beads of the cheapest and commonest
"Made-in-Germany" kind, hung in festoons round his neck. "Beades,
sir-r-r," he begins persuasively, and the other chimes in a duet,
"Poste-carte." "Beades," continues the new tormentor, swinging his wares
in our faces. Evidently "no" is a word not understood by these gentry.
They go on at it hard for about five minutes, our stony silence in no
way diminishing their enthusiasm, and then from the corner of my eye I
see a tall man, with an exceptionally handsome face, clothed in a
beautiful long coat of blue cloth cut away to show a great orange sash
undernea