"You knew Miss Beatrice Poles," continued M. de Morin. "I pointed that female phenomenon out to you one day when we were smoking a cigar in the balcony at the club. She was, you will remember, plunging along the pavement right in front of you at a prodigious rate, for all the world like an express train under full steam. She banged through the various groups of people, however compact they were, with a dig in the ribs to the right, and a resolute shove to the left. She would inevitably have upset every obstacle in her path, had not the children taken to flight, the women squeezed themselves against the houses, and the men taken refuge in the gutter. As the rapidity of her movements prevented your distinguishing her features, I showed you her portrait, which was not overdone in the least particular, I assure you. Nothing was due to any invention—neither the leanness, nor the length, nor the arms, nor the hands, nor the feet, nor the enormous blue spectacles. "Well, just picture to yourself that this elegant creature believes that Périères, Delange, and myself are in love, over head and ears in love with her. And we are unmerciful enough (one must amuse oneself on board ship) to humour her in that hallucination. I overwhelm her with compliments, and all kinds of delicate attractions; Delange is every moment bestowing on her the most amorous glances, and Périères sighs to such an extent that he might very well pass for a love-sick locomotive. The heart of Miss Beatrice Poles fluctuates between all three of us, and we shall let it do so—to fix it on one of us would be rather too dangerous. "Apart from her delusion in believing herself young, lovely, and ardently beloved, she is an excellent woman, intelligent, even amusing where she herself is not concerned, an invaluable adviser, courageous, untiring, and exemplary in every way. "I am sorry to say that I cannot give my servant Joseph such a good character. He is a regular stupid! Imagine his having, instead of putting Joseph on his baggage, which was sent on in advance to Egypt, labelled it Mohammed-Abd-el-Gazal, a fancy name of his own creation, which he has thought proper to adopt. What was the result? At Suez a real Mohammed, for the name is the commonest possible in these parts, claimed Joseph's baggage as if it belonged to him. With that Egyptian mixture of carelessness and knavery, of which we have already had frequently to complain, the baggage was handed over to this claimant, and no doubt by this time it is in the desert.