"My trunk," she said to the Arab. "_You_ know, trunk--t-r-u-n-k, trunk--yes, trunk, with my name on it--_you_ know--n-a-m-e--my initials, I mean, _you_ know--T. D.--T. D. on both ends." The Arab did know "trunk"; the rest was mere embroidery. XXXVII THE SMILE OF THE SPHINX There was not much left of the afternoon when we reached Cairo, but some of us wandered off here and there to get the habit of the place, as it were. Laura and I came to a trolley-line presently, and found that it ran out to the Pyramids and Sphinx. We were rather shocked at the thought, but recovered and decided to steal a march on the others by slipping out there and having those old wonders all to ourselves, at sunset. It is a long way. You pass through streets of many kinds and by houses of many sorts, and you cross the Nile and glide down an avenue of palms where there are glimpses of water--the infinite desert stretching away into the evening. Long before we reached them we saw the outlines of the three pyramids against the sky, and then we made out the Sphinx--that old group which is perhaps the most familiar picture that children know. Yet, somehow, it could not be true that this was the reality of the pictures we had seen. The likeness was very great, certainly, but those pictures had represented something in a realm of books and romance--the unattainable land--while these were here; we were actually going to them, and in a trolley-car! It required all the spell of Egypt then--the palms, the desert, and the evening sky--to fit the reality into its old place in the hall of dreams. We had thought to have a quiet view, but this was a miscalculation. There is no such thing as a quiet view of the Pyramids. At any hour of the day or night you are immediately beset by beggars and fortune-tellers and would-be guides, and you are pulled and dragged and distracted by their importunities until you have lost all interest in your original purpose in a general desire to start a plague or a massacre that will wipe out the whole pestiferous crew. There is no hope, except in the employment of one or two of the guides--the strongest-looking ones, who will in a certain measure keep off the others--and you will have to engage donkeys, and perhaps have your fortune told. Otherwise these creatures will follow you and surround you, insisting that they want no money; that they only love you; that it makes them happy even to be near you; that they love all Americans; that, in short, for a shilling, just a shilling, and a baksheesh (a piastre), one little baksheesh, they will become your guide, your slave, the dirt under your feet--"Ah, mister--ze Sphinkis, ze Pyramid, aevry-zing!" It is a disgrace to Egypt, and to England who is in charge here now, that such persecution is permitted in the shadow of one of the world's most revered and imposing ruins.