“It is a pity she has no one to look after her,” said Mrs. Damer. M. Delabordeau was still listening to Miss Dawkins’s raptures about Mount Sinai. “I wonder whether she has got any money,” said M. Delabordeau to himself. “It can’t be much,” he went on thinking, “or she would not be left in this way by herself.” And the result of his thoughts was that Miss Dawkins, if undertaken, might probably become more plague than profit. As to Miss Dawkins herself, though she was ecstatic about Mount Sinai—which was not present—she seemed to have forgotten the poor Pyramids, which were then before her nose. The two lads were riding races along the dusty path, much to the disgust of their donkey-boys. Their time for enjoyment was to come. There were hampers to be opened; and then the absolute climbing of the Pyramids would actually be a delight to them. As for Miss Damer and Mr. Ingram, it was clear that they had forgotten palm-trees, Pyramids, the Nile, and all Egypt. They had escaped to a much fairer paradise. “Could I bear to live among Republicans?” said Fanny, repeating the last words of her American lover, and looking down from her donkey to the ground as she did so. “I hardly know what Republicans are, Mr. Ingram.” “Let me teach you,” said he. “You do talk such nonsense. I declare there is that Miss Dawkins looking at us as though she had twenty eyes. Could you not teach her, Mr. Ingram?” And so they emerged from the palm-tree grove, through a village crowded with dirty, straggling Arab children, on to the cultivated plain, beyond which the Pyramids stood, now full before them; the two large Pyramids, a smaller one, and the huge sphynx’s head all in a group together. “Fanny,” said Bob Damer, riding up to her, “mamma wants you; so toddle back.” “Mamma wants me! What can she want me for now?” said Fanny, with a look of anything but filial duty in her face. “To protect her from Miss Dawkins, I think. She wants you to ride at her side, so that Dawkins mayn’t get at her. Now, Mr. Ingram, I’ll bet you half-a-crown I’m at the top of the big Pyramid before you.” Poor Fanny! She obeyed, however; doubtless feeling that it would not do as yet to show too plainly that she preferred Mr. Ingram to her mother. She arrested her donkey, therefore, till Mrs. Damer overtook her; and Mr. Ingram, as he paused for a moment with her while she did so, fell into the hands of Miss Dawkins. “I cannot think, Fanny, how you get on so quick,” said Mrs. Damer. “I’m always last; but then my donkey is such a very nasty one. Look there, now; he’s always trying to get me off.” “We shall soon be at the Pyramids now, mamma.” “How on earth I am ever to get back again I cannot think. I am so tired now that I can hardly sit.” “You’ll be better, mamma, when you get your luncheon and a glass of wine.”