the energy I used to use to the kitchen floor, and not half the result
to show for it, eh, Timothy lad? Do you think he was in love with her,
or is it a case of--oh, what's them two words which mean that you can't
think of anything but one thing."

"_Ide fixe_," enlightened Diana Lytham.

"Eyedyfix! Sounds like one of those cocktails that heathen
feller-me-lad's always trying to poison me with, eh, Miss Diana,"
chuckled the old manufacturer, who worshipped the cloth of aristocracy,
and even reverenced the fringe.

"Oh, you bet he was in love all right, don't you think so, Mary
dearest," and the small grey eyes snapped spitefully across at the
good-natured, healthy girl, who had raised a weak resemblance of hate
in her whilom school friend's breast, more by the matter-of-course,
jolly way she had helped lame dogs over stiles than the fact that such
obstructions had never lain in her path.

"Are you talking about Jack and Jill? Everybody loved her, and she was
made to be loved, was beautiful, wilful Jillikins. I wish he could
find her, or a trace, or some news of her! Oh, but surely we are
intruding upon his own affairs too much, and I _wonder_ what has----
Oh, but listen--do listen, did you ever hear such a noise, and just
_look_ at the crowds! Why, the whole of old Cairo is coming this way."

Even as she spoke, two Arabs, mounted on superb horses, and brandishing
spears, dashed past the cars, shouting continuously what would be the
equivalent of "clear the way" in English, just as to the sound of
shouting and singing, the beating of drums, and clashing of cymbals, a
stream of natives, dancing and waving their arms, poured into the
square.

Round and round they spun about six great camels, which, hung with
bells and decked from head to stubbly tail with glistening harness and
embroidered saddle-cloths, stalked ahead, unheeding of the tumult;
whilst riders of restless horses did their best to regulate the action
and pace of the nervous animals.

Behind them walked scores of young men in snow-white galabeah, their
impassive, delicately curved faces surmounted by the scarlet tarboosh,
chanting that old-Egyptian marriage song of which the music score was
lost some few thousand years ago, lying perhaps securely hidden in a
secret chamber, undiscovered in the ruins of Karnak, but which song,
without a single alteration of note or word, has descended from Rameses
the Second down through the history-laden centuri