ame up and rode
beside me, and said, 'I know you are a person of kindness; do not tell
this story in this country. If Effendina (Ismail Pasha) comes to hear,
he may "take a broom and sweep away the village."' I exclaimed in
horror, and Mustapha joined at once in the request, and said, 'Do not
tell anyone in Egypt. The Sheykh-el-Ababdeh is quite true; it might cost
many lives.' The whole thing distressed me horribly. If I had not been
there they would have beaten right and left, and if I had shown any
desire to have anyone punished, evidently they would have half killed the
two men. Mustapha behaved extremely well. He showed sense, decision,
and more feelings of humanity than I at all expected of him. Pray do as
I begged you, try to get him paid. Some of the Consuls in Cairo are
barely civil, and old Mustapha has all the bother and work of the whole
of the Nile boats (eighty-five this winter), and he is boundlessly kind
and useful to the English, and a real protection against cheating, etc.

March 16, 1864: Mr. Tom Taylor

_To Mr. Tom Taylor_.

_March_ 16, 1864.

DEAR TOM,

I cannot tell you how delighted I was to hear that all had gone well with
Laura and your little daughter. _Mashallah_! God bless her! When I
told Omar that a friend 'like my brother,' as Arabs say, had got a baby,
he proposed to illuminate our house and fire off all the pistols in the
premises. Pray give my kind love and best wishes to Laura.

I am living here a very quiet, dreamy sort of life in hot Thebes,
visiting a little among my neighbours and learning a little Arabic from a
most sweet, gentle young Sheykh who preaches on Fridays in the mosque of
Luxor. I wish I could draw his soft brown face and graceful,
brown-draped figure; but if I could, he is too devout I believe, to
permit it. The police magistrate--el-Maohn--Seleem Effendi, is also a
great friend of mine, and the Kadee is civil, but a little scornful to
heretical Hareem, I think. It is already very hot, and the few remaining
traveller's dahabiehs are now here on their way down the river; after
that I shall not see a white face for many months, except Sally's.

Sheykh Yussuf laughed so heartily over a print in an illustrated paper,
from a picture of Hilton's, of Rebekah at the well, with the old _Vakeel_
of Sidi Ibraheem (Abraham's chief servant) _kneeling_ before the girl he
w