good-humoured, as a rule, and could on occasions be very soft and winning.  People who had known her long would sometimes say that she was selfish; but with new acquaintance she was forbearing and self-denying.

With what income Miss Dawkins was blessed no one seemed to know.  She lived like a gentlewoman, as far as outward appearance went, and never seemed to be in want; but some people would say that she knew very well how many sides there were to a shilling, and some enemy had once declared that she was an “old soldier.”  Such was Miss Dawkins.

She also, as well as Mr. Ingram and M. Delabordeau, had laid herself out to find the weak side of Mr. Damer.  Mr. Damer, with all his family, was going up the Nile, and it was known that he had room for two in his boat over and above his own family.  Miss Dawkins had told him that she had not quite made up her mind to undergo so great a fatigue, but that, nevertheless, she had a longing of the soul to see something of Nubia.  To this Mr. Damer had answered nothing but “Oh!” which Miss Dawkins had not found to be encouraging.

But she had not on that account despaired.  To a married man there are always two sides, and in this instance there was Mrs. Damer as well as Mr. Damer.  When Mr. Damer said “Oh!” Miss Dawkins sighed, and said, “Yes, indeed!” then smiled, and betook herself to Mrs. Damer.

Now Mrs. Damer was soft-hearted, and also somewhat old-fashioned.  She did not conceive any violent affection for Miss Dawkins, but she told her daughter that “the single lady by herself was a very nice young woman, and that it was a thousand pities she should have to go about so much alone like.”

Miss Damer had turned up her pretty nose, thinking, perhaps, how small was the chance that it ever should be her own lot to be an unprotected female.  But Miss Dawkins carried her point at any rate as regarded the expedition to the Pyramids.

Miss Damer, I have said, had a pretty nose.  I may also say that she had pretty eyes, mouth, and chin, with other necessary appendages, all pretty.  As to the two Master Damers, who were respectively of the ages of fifteen and sixteen, it may be sufficient to say that they were conspicuous for red caps and for the constancy with which they raced their donkeys.

And now the donkeys, and the donkey boys, and the dragomans were all standing at the steps of Shepheard’s Hotel.  To each donkey there was a donkey-boy, and to each gentleman there was a dragoman, so that a goodly cortége was assembled, and a goodly noise was made.  It may here be remarked, perhaps with some little pride, that not half the noise is given in Egypt to persons speaking any other language that is bestowed on those whose vocabulary is English.

This lasted for half an hour.  Had the party been French the donkeys would have arrived only fifteen minutes before the appointed time.  And then out came Damer père and Damer mère, Damer fille, and Damer fils.  Damer mère was leaning on her husband, as was her wont.  She was not an unprotected female, and had no desire to make any attempts in that line.  Damer fille was attended sedulously by Mr. Ingram, for whose demolishment, however, Mr. Damer still brought up, in a loud voice, the fag ends of certain political arguments which he would fain have poured direct into the ears of his opponent, had not his wife been so persistent in claiming her privileges.  M. Delabordeau should have followed with Miss Dawkins, but his French politeness, or else his fear of the unprotected female, taught him to walk on the other side of the mistress of the party.

Miss Dawkins left the house with an eager young Damer yelling on each side of her; but nevertheless, though thus neglected by the gentlemen of the party, she was all smiles and prettiness, and looked so sweetly on Mr. Ingram when that gentleman stayed a moment to help her on to her donkey, that his heart almost misgave him for leaving her as soon as she was in her seat.

And then they were off.  In going from the hotel to the Pyramids our party had not to pass through any of the queer old narrow streets of the true Cairo—Cairo the Oriental.  They all lay behind them as they went down by the back of the hotel, by the barracks of the Pasha and the College of the Dervishes, to the village of old Cairo and the banks of the Nile.

Here they were kept half an hour while their dragomans made a bargain with the ferryman, a stately reis, or captain of a boat, who declared with much dignity that he could not carry them over for a sum less than six times the amount to which he was justly entitled; while the dragomans, with great energy on behalf of their masters, offered him only five times that sum.

As far as the reis was concerned, the contest might soon have been at an end, for the man was not without a conscience; and would have been content with five times and a half; but then the three dragomans quarrelled among themselves as to which should have the paying of the money, and the affair became very tedious.

“What horrid, odious men!” said Miss Dawkins, appealing to Mr. Damer.  “Do you think they will let us go over at all?”

“Well, I suppose they will; people do get over generally, I believe.  Abdallah!  Abdallah! why don’t you pay the man?  That fellow is always striving to save half a piastre for me.”

“I wish he wasn’t quite so particular,” said Mrs. Damer, who was already becoming rather tired; “but I’m sure he’s a very honest man in trying to protect us from being robbed.”

“That he is,” said Miss Dawkins.  “What a delightful trait of national character it is to see these men so faithful to their employers.”  And then at last they got over the ferry, Mr. Ingram having descended among the combatants, and settled the matter in dispute by threats and shouts, and an uplifted stick.

They crossed the broad Nile exactly at the spot where the nilometer, or river guage, measures from day to day, and from year to year, the increasing or decreasing treasures of the stream, and landed at a village where thousands of eggs are made into chickens by the process of artificial incubation.

Mrs. Damer thought that it was very hard upon the maternal hens—the hens which should have been maternal—that they should be thus robbed of the delights of motherhood.

“So unnatural, you know,” said Miss Dawkins; “so opposed to the fostering principles of creation.  Don’t you think so, Mr. Ingram?”

Mr. Ingram said he didn’t know.  He was again seating Miss Damer on her donkey, and it must be presumed that he performed this feat clumsily; for Fanny Damer could jump on and off the animal with hardly a finger to help her, when her brother or her father was her escort; but now, under the hands of Mr. Ingram, this work of mounting was one which required considerable time and care.  All which Miss Dawkins observed with precision.

“It’s all very well talking,” said Mr. Damer, bringing up his donkey nearly alongside that of Mr. Ingram, and ignoring his daughter’s presence, just as he would have done that of his dog; “but you must admit that political power is more equally distributed in England than it is in America.”

“Perhaps it is,” said Mr. Ingram; “equally distributed among, we will say, three dozen families,” and he made a feint as though to hold in his impetuous donkey, using the spur, however, at the same time on the side that was unseen by Mr. Damer.  As he did so, Fanny’s donkey became equally impetuous, and the two cantered on in advance of the whole party.  It was quite in vain that Mr. Damer, at the top of his voice, shouted out something about “three dozen corruptible demagogues.”  Mr. Ingram found it quite impossible to restrain his donkey so as to listen to the sarcasm.

“I do believe papa would talk politics,” said Fanny, “if he were at the top of Mont Blanc, or under the Falls of Niagara.  I do hate politics, Mr. Ingram.”

“I am sorry for that,