inine race. What _is_ the good of customs if you
don't stick to them? The donkeys' parents had always climbed that hill
heavily-laden, and what was good enough for them was also good enough
for their descendants!

"I think it's horrid of you, Damaris. Besides, what are you going to
do all by yourself?" said Ellen, opening a letter bits of which she
proceeded to read out. "Here's a letter from Sybil Sidmouth. She and
Mr. Kelham are having a very poor time sitting about in the rocks and
tombs all day and half the night."

"How romantic!" sighed Berenice. "All alone with Nature in an Egyptian
desert! It reminds me of Omar's Jug and Loaf verse. How does it go?"
She flipped through her notebook. "Ah! here it is." And she proceeded
to read, with appropriate punctuation with her tea-spoon on the edge of
her saucer:

"A book of verses underneath the bough
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and Thou
Beside me, singing in the wilderness;
O, wilderness were Paradise enow!"

She looked up, suddenly, surprised and indignant, at Ellen, who had
kicked her violently under the table; then she tried to cover up her
confusion at her unfortunate _faux pas_.

"Mrs. Sidmouth, of course, is far from well," she continued. But Ellen
broke in, in her high staccato and appalling French:

"_Revenons a nos moutons_--or at least, our donkeys." She looked at
Damaris, who, with over-bright eyes, laughed whole-heartedly at the
feeble joke. "Do change your mind, Damaris. The guide is Yussuf, the
very best, you know. Besides, we _might_ see the lion."

"All right," said Damaris, tucking the jasmine into the belt of her
white dress, which she had never done before. "I'll come. Twenty
pairs of donkeys climbing up a hill will be an awfully funny
sight,--don't you think so, Mr. Lumlough?"

She smiled across at Mr. Lumlough, who was thereupon transported to the
portals of the seventh heaven with a piece of toast and marmalade in
his right hand.

CHAPTER XX

"_I was never less alone than when by myself_."

GIBBON.

Next morning, with her chaperon's energetic daughters, Damaris found
herself one of the herd foregathered on the Nile bank preparatory to
the excursion to the Valley of the Kings, and later in the afternoon by
mountain path over the ridge to that marvel of antiquity the
Terrace-Temple of Deir el-Bahari.

"I don't want to go, Janie dear," she said, the preceding night, whilst
the devoted ma