girl do when she big enough to
ask for her father.' In short, Omar wants to exercise his diplomacy in
making up the quarrel. After writing this I heard Mohammed's low, quiet
voice, and Omar's boyish laugh, and then silence, and went to see the
baby and its father. My kitchen was a pretty scene. Mohammed, in his
ample brown robes and white turban, lay asleep on the floor with the
baby's tiny pale face and little eyelids stained with kohl against his
coffee-brown cheek, both fast asleep, baby in her father's arms. Omar
leant against the _fournaise_ in his house-dress, a white shirt open at
the throat and white drawers reaching to the knees, with the red tarboosh
and red and yellow _kufyeh_ (silk handkerchief) round it turban-wise,
contemplating them with his great, soft eyes. The two young men made an
excellent contrast between Upper and Lower Egypt. Mohammed is the true
Arab type--coffee-brown, thin, spare, sharp-featured, elegant hands and
feet, bright glittering small eyes and angular jaw--not a handsome Arab,
but _bien characterise_. Omar, the colour of new boxwood or old ivory,
pale, with eyes like a cow, full lips, full chin and short nose, not the
least negro, but perfectly Egyptian, the eyes wide apart--unlike the
Arab--moustache like a woman's eyebrow, curly brown hair, bad hands and
feet and not well made, but graceful in movement and still more in
countenance, very inferior in beauty to the pure Arab blood which
prevails here, but most sweet in expression. He is a true _Akh-ul-Benat_
(brother of girls), and truly chivalrous to _Hareem_. How astonished
Europeans would be to hear Omar's real opinion of their conduct to women.
He mentioned some Englishman who had divorced his wife and made her
frailty public. You should have seen him spit on the floor in
abhorrence. Here it is quite blackguard not to forfeit the money and
take all the blame in a divorce.

_Friday_.--We have had better weather again, easterly wind and pretty
cool, and I am losing the cough and languor which the damp of the Simoom
brought me. Sheykh Yussuf has just come back from Keneh, whither he and
the Kadee went on their donkeys for some law business. He took our
saddle bags at Omar's request, and brought us back a few pounds of sugar
and some rice and tobacco (isn't it like Fielding's novels?). It is two
days' journey, so they slept in the mosque at Koos half way. I told
Yussuf how Suleyman's child has the smallpox and how Mohamm