Now in a place like Shepheard’s, where every fresh arrival has the honor of contributing, for at least a few minutes, to the general entertainment, the first appearance of L---- and the writer, tired, dusty, and considerably sunburned, may well have given rise to some of the comments in usual circulation at those crowded tables. People asked each other, most likely, where these two wandering Englishwomen had come from; why they had not dressed for dinner; what brought them to Egypt; and if they also were going up the Nile--to which questions it would have been easy to give satisfactory answers. We came from Alexandria, having had a rough passage from Brindisi, followed by forty-eight hours of quarantine. We had not dressed for dinner because, having driven on from the station in advance of dragoman and luggage, we were but just in time to take seats with the rest. We intended, of course, to go up the Nile; and had any one ventured to inquire in so many words what brought us to Egypt, we should have replied: “Stress of weather.” For in simple truth we had drifted hither by accident, with no excuse of health, or business, or any serious object whatever; and had just taken refuge in Egypt as one might turn aside into the Burlington Arcade or the Passage des Panoramas--to get out of the rain. And with good reason. Having left home early in September for a few weeks’ sketching in central France, we had been pursued by the wettest of wet weather. Washed out of the hill country, we fared no better in the plains. At Nismes it poured for a month without stopping. Debating at last whether it were better to take our wet umbrellas back at once to England, or push on farther still in search of sunshine, the talk fell upon Algiers--Malta--Cairo; and Cairo carried it. Never was distant expedition entered upon with less premeditation! The thing was no sooner decided than we were gone. Nice, Genoa, Bologna, Ancona flitted by, as in a dream; and Bedreddin Hassan when he awoke at the gates of Damascus was scarcely more surprised than the writer of these pages when she found herself on board of the Simla and steaming out of the port of Brindisi. Here, then, without definite plans, outfit, or any kind of oriental experience, behold us arrived in Cairo on the 29th of November, 1873, literally, and most prosaically, in search of fine weather.