We did so, and in exchange for a few piastres received a fairly heavy consignment of bilious-looking lollies and Turkish Delight. These we straightway proceeded to hold up to the expectant view of the smaller kiddies. The thing worked like a charm: kids are the same all the world over. In a few minutes the mothers stole shyly forward and held up their babies to receive their rightful share of the unexpected windfall. Soon the whole crowd, mothers, kids, and flappers, were laughing and jostling round us to the admiration and envy of our retinue. They could not resist the call of those sticky confections. They had been seduced by a concoction of sugar and gum arabic. We bought the old Ishmaelite right out and distributed _backsheesh_ with a lavish hand, then proceeded to "do" the township at the head of a now much augmented following. I guess they sized us up as a new brand in the public philanthropic line. It wasn't every day that millionaires who sported five-piastre pieces came to town. I fancy _their_ coinage was a copper one. Maarg we found to be a typical _fellaheen_ village, inhabited by the usual mob of picturesque-looking and untidy natives, half Egyptian and half Arabic; goats, donkeys, bastard sheep, and hens. It boasted a miniature mosque, a grocery and provision store, a broken-down potter's factory, a cemetery, but no sanitation department. The low, dirty-white houses were topped by the customary flat roofs on which the family washing (when there happened to be any) flaunted its shameless nakedness. The streets, carpeted with the freewill offerings of the citizens, began anywhere and finished nowhere—except when they led you unsuspectingly into the living-room of one of the aforesaid citizens. On the whole we found Maarg to be a really interesting place, and the inhabitants even more interesting. But they took some getting acquainted with, for at first every woman and child bolted to cover as soon as we loomed in sight, following at a safe distance when we had passed on, and stopping when we stopped. We smiled our sweetest: no effect. We purchased lollies from the provision merchant and started scrambles among our own immediate train: they approached. Those scrambles were the limit. They began with the nippers. Then the flappers joined in. Next the mothers, some with babies in their arms, took a hand in the deal. Finally the men, their dignity upset by the thought of so much good tucker going into other stomachs than their own, joined in the general mix-up, and the show ended in a flurry of legs and wings for all the world like a cross between a ballet dance and a Rugby scrum.