offee, brought. In a minute a dozen men came and sat round, and asked
as usual, 'Whence comest thou, and whither goest thou?' and my gloves,
watch, rings, etc. were handed round and examined; the gloves always call
forth many _Mashallah's_. I said, 'I come from the Frank country, and am
going to my place near Abu'l Hajjaj.' Hereupon everyone touched my hand
and said, 'Praise be to God that we have seen thee. Don't go on: stay
here and take 100 feddans of land and remain here.' I laughed and asked,
'Should I wear the _zaboot_ (brown shirt) and the _libdeh_, and work in
the field, seeing there is no man with me?' There was much laughing, and
then several stories of women who had farmed large properties well and
successfully. Such undertakings on the part of women seem quite as
common here as in Europe, and more common than in England.

I took leave of my new friends who had given me the first welcome home to
the Saeed, and we went on to Keneh, which we reached early in the
morning, and I found my well-known donkey-boys putting my saddle on. The
father of one, and the two brothers of the other, were gone to work on
the railway for sixty days' forced labour, taking their own bread, and
the poor little fellows were left alone to take care of the Hareem. As
soon as we reached the town, a couple of tall young soldiers in the Nizam
uniform rushed after me, and greeted me in English; they were Luxor lads
serving their time. Of course they attached themselves to us for the
rest of the day. We then bought water jars (the _specialite_ of Keneh);
_gullehs_ and _zees_--and I went on to the Kadee's house to leave a
little string of beads, just to show that I had not forgotten the worthy
Kadee's courtesy in bringing his little daughter to sit beside me at
dinner when I went down the river last summer. I saw the Kadee giving
audience to several people, so I sent in the beads and my salaam; but the
jolly Kadee sallied forth into the street and 'fell upon my neck' with
such ardour that my Frankish hat was sent rolling by contact with the
turban of Islam. The Kadee of Keneh is the real original Kadee of our
early days; sleek, rubicund, polite--a puisne judge and a dean rolled
into one, combining the amenities of the law and the church--with an
orthodox stomach and an orthodox turban, both round and stately. I was
taken into the hareem, welcomed and regaled, and invited to the festival
of Seyd Abd er-Racheem, the great saint of