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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids, by
+Anthony Trollope
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids
+
+
+Author: Anthony Trollope
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 16, 2015  [eBook #3710]
+[This file was first posted on July 31, 2001]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN UNPROTECTED FEMALE AT THE
+PYRAMIDS***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1864 Chapman and Hall “Tales of All Countries”
+edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                  AN UNPROTECTED FEMALE AT THE PYRAMIDS
+
+
+IN the happy days when we were young, no description conveyed to us so
+complete an idea of mysterious reality as that of an Oriental city.  We
+knew it was actually there, but had such vague notions of its ways and
+looks!  Let any one remember his early impressions as to Bagdad or Grand
+Cairo, and then say if this was not so.  It was probably taken from the
+“Arabian Nights,” and the picture produced was one of strange, fantastic,
+luxurious houses; of women who were either very young and very beautiful,
+or else very old and very cunning; but in either state exercising much
+more influence in life than women in the East do now; of good-natured,
+capricious, though sometimes tyrannical monarchs; and of life full of
+quaint mysteries, quite unintelligible in every phasis, and on that
+account the more picturesque.
+
+And perhaps Grand Cairo has thus filled us with more wonder even than
+Bagdad.  We have been in a certain manner at home at Bagdad, but have
+only visited Grand Cairo occasionally.  I know no place which was to me,
+in early years, so delightfully mysterious as Grand Cairo.
+
+But the route to India and Australia has changed all this.  Men from all
+countries going to the East, now pass through Cairo, and its streets and
+costumes are no longer strange to us.  It has become also a resort for
+invalids, or rather for those who fear that they may become invalids if
+they remain in a cold climate during the winter months.  And thus at
+Cairo there is always to be found a considerable population of French,
+Americans, and of English.  Oriental life is brought home to us,
+dreadfully diluted by western customs, and the delights of the “Arabian
+Nights” are shorn of half their value.  When we have seen a thing it is
+never so magnificent to us as when it was half unknown.
+
+It is not much that we deign to learn from these Orientals,—we who glory
+in our civilisation.  We do not copy their silence or their
+abstemiousness, nor that invariable mindfulness of his own personal
+dignity which always adheres to a Turk or to an Arab.  We chatter as much
+at Cairo as elsewhere, and eat as much and drink as much, and dress
+ourselves generally in the same old ugly costume.  But we do usually take
+upon ourselves to wear red caps, and we do ride on donkeys.
+
+Nor are the visitors from the West to Cairo by any means confined to the
+male sex.  Ladies are to be seen in the streets quite regardless of the
+Mahommedan custom which presumes a veil to be necessary for an appearance
+in public; and, to tell the truth, the Mahommedans in general do not
+appear to be much shocked by their effrontery.
+
+A quarter of the town has in this way become inhabited by men wearing
+coats and waistcoats, and by women who are without veils; but the English
+tongue in Egypt finds its centre at Shepheard’s Hotel.  It is here that
+people congregate who are looking out for parties to visit with them the
+Upper Nile, and who are generally all smiles and courtesy; and here also
+are to be found they who have just returned from this journey, and who
+are often in a frame of mind towards their companions that is much less
+amiable.  From hence, during the winter, a cortége proceeds almost daily
+to the pyramids, or to Memphis, or to the petrified forest, or to the
+City of the Sun.  And then, again, four or five times a month the house
+is filled with young aspirants going out to India, male and female, full
+of valour and bloom; or with others coming home, no longer young, no
+longer aspiring, but laden with children and grievances.
+
+The party with whom we are at present concerned is not about to proceed
+further than the Pyramids, and we shall be able to go with them and
+return in one and the same day.
+
+It consisted chiefly of an English family, Mr. and Mrs. Damer, their
+daughter, and two young sons;—of these chiefly, because they were the
+nucleus to which the others had attached themselves as adherents; they
+had originated the journey, and in the whole management of it Mr. Damer
+regarded himself as the master.
+
+The adherents were, firstly, M. Delabordeau, a Frenchman, now resident in
+Cairo, who had given out that he was in some way concerned in the canal
+about to be made between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.  In
+discussion on this subject he had become acquainted with Mr. Damer; and
+although the latter gentleman, true to English interests, perpetually
+declared that the canal would never be made, and thus irritated M.
+Delabordeau not a little—nevertheless, some measure of friendship had
+grown up between them.
+
+There was also an American gentleman, Mr. Jefferson Ingram, who was
+comprising all countries and all nations in one grand tour, as American
+gentlemen so often do.  He was young and good-looking, and had made
+himself especially agreeable to Mr. Damer, who had declared, more than
+once, that Mr. Ingram was by far the most rational American he had ever
+met.  Mr. Ingram would listen to Mr. Damer by the half-hour as to the
+virtue of the British Constitution, and had even sat by almost with
+patience when Mr. Damer had expressed a doubt as to the good working of
+the United States’ scheme of policy,—which, in an American, was most
+wonderful.  But some of the sojourners at Shepheard’s had observed that
+Mr. Ingram was in the habit of talking with Miss Damer almost as much as
+with her father, and argued from that, that fond as the young man was of
+politics, he did sometimes turn his mind to other things also.
+
+And then there was Miss Dawkins.  Now Miss Dawkins was an important
+person, both as to herself and as to her line of life, and she must be
+described.  She was, in the first place, an unprotected female of about
+thirty years of age.  As this is becoming an established profession,
+setting itself up as it were in opposition to the old world idea that
+women, like green peas, cannot come to perfection without
+supporting-sticks, it will be understood at once what were Miss Dawkins’s
+sentiments.  She considered—or at any rate so expressed herself—that peas
+could grow very well without sticks, and could not only grow thus
+unsupported, but could also make their way about the world without any
+incumbrance of sticks whatsoever.  She did not intend, she said, to rival
+Ida Pfeiffer, seeing that she was attached in a moderate way to bed and
+board, and was attached to society in a manner almost more than moderate;
+but she had no idea of being prevented from seeing anything she wished to
+see because she had neither father, nor husband, nor brother available
+for the purpose of escort.  She was a human creature, with arms and legs,
+she said; and she intended to use them.  And this was all very well; but
+nevertheless she had a strong inclination to use the arms and legs of
+other people when she could make them serviceable.
+
+In person Miss Dawkins was not without attraction.  I should exaggerate
+if I were to say that she was beautiful and elegant; but she was good
+looking, and not usually ill mannered.  She was tall, and gifted with
+features rather sharp and with eyes very bright.  Her hair was of the
+darkest shade of brown, and was always worn in bandeaux, very neatly.
+She appeared generally in black, though other circumstances did not lead
+one to suppose that she was in mourning; and then, no other travelling
+costume is so convenient!  She always wore a dark broad-brimmed straw
+hat, as to the ribbons on which she was rather particular.  She was very
+neat about her gloves and boots; and though it cannot be said that her
+dress was got up without reference to expense, there can be no doubt that
+it was not effected without considerable outlay,—and more considerable
+thought.
+
+Miss Dawkins—Sabrina Dawkins was her name, but she seldom had friends
+about her intimate enough to use the word Sabrina—was certainly a clever
+young woman.  She could talk on most subjects, if not well, at least well
+enough to amuse.  If she had not read much, she never showed any
+lamentable deficiency; she was good-humoured, as a rule, and could on
+occasions be very soft and winning.  People who had known her long would
+sometimes say that she was selfish; but with new acquaintance she was
+forbearing and self-denying.
+
+With what income Miss Dawkins was blessed no one seemed to know.  She
+lived like a gentlewoman, as far as outward appearance went, and never
+seemed to be in want; but some people would say that she knew very well
+how many sides there were to a shilling, and some enemy had once declared
+that she was an “old soldier.”  Such was Miss Dawkins.
+
+She also, as well as Mr. Ingram and M. Delabordeau, had laid herself out
+to find the weak side of Mr. Damer.  Mr. Damer, with all his family, was
+going up the Nile, and it was known that he had room for two in his boat
+over and above his own family.  Miss Dawkins had told him that she had
+not quite made up her mind to undergo so great a fatigue, but that,
+nevertheless, she had a longing of the soul to see something of Nubia.
+To this Mr. Damer had answered nothing but “Oh!” which Miss Dawkins had
+not found to be encouraging.
+
+But she had not on that account despaired.  To a married man there are
+always two sides, and in this instance there was Mrs. Damer as well as
+Mr. Damer.  When Mr. Damer said “Oh!” Miss Dawkins sighed, and said,
+“Yes, indeed!” then smiled, and betook herself to Mrs. Damer.
+
+Now Mrs. Damer was soft-hearted, and also somewhat old-fashioned.  She
+did not conceive any violent affection for Miss Dawkins, but she told her
+daughter that “the single lady by herself was a very nice young woman,
+and that it was a thousand pities she should have to go about so much
+alone like.”
+
+Miss Damer had turned up her pretty nose, thinking, perhaps, how small
+was the chance that it ever should be her own lot to be an unprotected
+female.  But Miss Dawkins carried her point at any rate as regarded the
+expedition to the Pyramids.
+
+Miss Damer, I have said, had a pretty nose.  I may also say that she had
+pretty eyes, mouth, and chin, with other necessary appendages, all
+pretty.  As to the two Master Damers, who were respectively of the ages
+of fifteen and sixteen, it may be sufficient to say that they were
+conspicuous for red caps and for the constancy with which they raced
+their donkeys.
+
+And now the donkeys, and the donkey boys, and the dragomans were all
+standing at the steps of Shepheard’s Hotel.  To each donkey there was a
+donkey-boy, and to each gentleman there was a dragoman, so that a goodly
+cortége was assembled, and a goodly noise was made.  It may here be
+remarked, perhaps with some little pride, that not half the noise is
+given in Egypt to persons speaking any other language that is bestowed on
+those whose vocabulary is English.
+
+This lasted for half an hour.  Had the party been French the donkeys
+would have arrived only fifteen minutes before the appointed time.  And
+then out came Damer père and Damer mère, Damer fille, and Damer fils.
+Damer mère was leaning on her husband, as was her wont.  She was not an
+unprotected female, and had no desire to make any attempts in that line.
+Damer fille was attended sedulously by Mr. Ingram, for whose
+demolishment, however, Mr. Damer still brought up, in a loud voice, the
+fag ends of certain political arguments which he would fain have poured
+direct into the ears of his opponent, had not his wife been so persistent
+in claiming her privileges.  M. Delabordeau should have followed with
+Miss Dawkins, but his French politeness, or else his fear of the
+unprotected female, taught him to walk on the other side of the mistress
+of the party.
+
+Miss Dawkins left the house with an eager young Damer yelling on each
+side of her; but nevertheless, though thus neglected by the gentlemen of
+the party, she was all smiles and prettiness, and looked so sweetly on
+Mr. Ingram when that gentleman stayed a moment to help her on to her
+donkey, that his heart almost misgave him for leaving her as soon as she
+was in her seat.
+
+And then they were off.  In going from the hotel to the Pyramids our
+party had not to pass through any of the queer old narrow streets of the
+true Cairo—Cairo the Oriental.  They all lay behind them as they went
+down by the back of the hotel, by the barracks of the Pasha and the
+College of the Dervishes, to the village of old Cairo and the banks of
+the Nile.
+
+Here they were kept half an hour while their dragomans made a bargain
+with the ferryman, a stately reis, or captain of a boat, who declared
+with much dignity that he could not carry them over for a sum less than
+six times the amount to which he was justly entitled; while the
+dragomans, with great energy on behalf of their masters, offered him only
+five times that sum.
+
+As far as the reis was concerned, the contest might soon have been at an
+end, for the man was not without a conscience; and would have been
+content with five times and a half; but then the three dragomans
+quarrelled among themselves as to which should have the paying of the
+money, and the affair became very tedious.
+
+“What horrid, odious men!” said Miss Dawkins, appealing to Mr. Damer.
+“Do you think they will let us go over at all?”
+
+“Well, I suppose they will; people do get over generally, I believe.
+Abdallah!  Abdallah! why don’t you pay the man?  That fellow is always
+striving to save half a piastre for me.”
+
+“I wish he wasn’t quite so particular,” said Mrs. Damer, who was already
+becoming rather tired; “but I’m sure he’s a very honest man in trying to
+protect us from being robbed.”
+
+“That he is,” said Miss Dawkins.  “What a delightful trait of national
+character it is to see these men so faithful to their employers.”  And
+then at last they got over the ferry, Mr. Ingram having descended among
+the combatants, and settled the matter in dispute by threats and shouts,
+and an uplifted stick.
+
+They crossed the broad Nile exactly at the spot where the nilometer, or
+river guage, measures from day to day, and from year to year, the
+increasing or decreasing treasures of the stream, and landed at a village
+where thousands of eggs are made into chickens by the process of
+artificial incubation.
+
+Mrs. Damer thought that it was very hard upon the maternal hens—the hens
+which should have been maternal—that they should be thus robbed of the
+delights of motherhood.
+
+“So unnatural, you know,” said Miss Dawkins; “so opposed to the fostering
+principles of creation.  Don’t you think so, Mr. Ingram?”
+
+Mr. Ingram said he didn’t know.  He was again seating Miss Damer on her
+donkey, and it must be presumed that he performed this feat clumsily; for
+Fanny Damer could jump on and off the animal with hardly a finger to help
+her, when her brother or her father was her escort; but now, under the
+hands of Mr. Ingram, this work of mounting was one which required
+considerable time and care.  All which Miss Dawkins observed with
+precision.
+
+“It’s all very well talking,” said Mr. Damer, bringing up his donkey
+nearly alongside that of Mr. Ingram, and ignoring his daughter’s
+presence, just as he would have done that of his dog; “but you must admit
+that political power is more equally distributed in England than it is in
+America.”
+
+“Perhaps it is,” said Mr. Ingram; “equally distributed among, we will
+say, three dozen families,” and he made a feint as though to hold in his
+impetuous donkey, using the spur, however, at the same time on the side
+that was unseen by Mr. Damer.  As he did so, Fanny’s donkey became
+equally impetuous, and the two cantered on in advance of the whole party.
+It was quite in vain that Mr. Damer, at the top of his voice, shouted out
+something about “three dozen corruptible demagogues.”  Mr. Ingram found
+it quite impossible to restrain his donkey so as to listen to the
+sarcasm.
+
+“I do believe papa would talk politics,” said Fanny, “if he were at the
+top of Mont Blanc, or under the Falls of Niagara.  I do hate politics,
+Mr. Ingram.”
+
+“I am sorry for that, very,” said Mr. Ingram, almost sadly.
+
+“Sorry, why?  You don’t want me to talk politics, do you?”
+
+“In America we are all politicians, more or less; and, therefore, I
+suppose you will hate us all.”
+
+“Well, I rather think I should,” said Fanny; “you would be such bores.”
+But there was something in her eye, as she spoke, which atoned for the
+harshness of her words.
+
+“A very nice young man is Mr. Ingram; don’t you think so?” said Miss
+Dawkins to Mrs. Damer.  Mrs. Damer was going along upon her donkey, not
+altogether comfortably.  She much wished to have her lord and legitimate
+protector by her side, but he had left her to the care of a dragoman
+whose English was not intelligible to her, and she was rather cross.
+
+“Indeed, Miss Dawkins, I don’t know who are nice and who are not.  This
+nasty donkey stumbles at ever step.  There!  I know I shall be down
+directly.”
+
+“You need not be at all afraid of that; they are perfectly safe, I
+believe, always,” said Miss Dawkins, rising in her stirrup, and handling
+her reins quite triumphantly.  “A very little practice will make you
+quite at home.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean by a very little practice.  I have been here
+six weeks.  Why did you put me on such a bad donkey as this?” and she
+turned to Abdallah, the dragoman.
+
+“Him berry good donkey, my lady; berry good,—best of all.  Call him Jack
+in Cairo.  Him go to Pyramid and back, and mind noting.”
+
+“What does he say, Miss Dawkins?”
+
+“He says that that donkey is one called Jack.  If so I’ve had him myself
+many times, and Jack is a very good donkey.”
+
+“I wish you had him now with all my heart,” said Mrs. Damer.  Upon which
+Miss Dawkins offered to change; but those perils of mounting and
+dismounting were to Mrs. Damer a great deal too severe to admit of this.
+
+“Seven miles of canal to be carried out into the sea, at a minimum depth
+of twenty-three feet, and the stone to be fetched from Heaven knows
+where!  All the money in France wouldn’t do it.”  This was addressed by
+Mr. Damer to M. Delabordeau, whom he had caught after the abrupt flight
+of Mr. Ingram.
+
+“Den we will borrow a leetle from England,” said M. Delabordeau.
+
+“Precious little, I can tell you.  Such stock would not hold its price in
+our markets for twenty-four hours.  If it were made, the freights would
+be too heavy to allow of merchandise passing through.  The heavy goods
+would all go round; and as for passengers and mails, you don’t expect to
+get them, I suppose, while there is a railroad ready made to their hand?”
+
+“Ye vill carry all your ships through vidout any transportation.  Think
+of that, my friend.”
+
+“Pshaw!  You are worse than Ingram.  Of all the plans I ever heard of it
+is the most monstrous, the most impracticable, the most—”  But here he
+was interrupted by the entreaties of his wife, who had, in absolute deed
+and fact, slipped from her donkey, and was now calling lustily for her
+husband’s aid.  Whereupon Miss Dawkins allied herself to the Frenchman,
+and listened with an air of strong conviction to those arguments which
+were so weak in the ears of Mr. Damer.  M. Delabordeau was about to ride
+across the Great Desert to Jerusalem, and it might perhaps be quite as
+well to do that with him, as to go up the Nile as far as the second
+cataract with the Damers.
+
+“And so, M. Delabordeau, you intend really to start for Mount Sinai?”
+
+“Yes, mees; ve intend to make one start on Monday week.”
+
+“And so on to Jerusalem.  You are quite right.  It would be a thousand
+pities to be in these countries, and to return without going over such
+ground as that.  I shall certainly go to Jerusalem myself by that route.”
+
+“Vot, mees! you?  Would you not find it too much fatigante?”
+
+“I care nothing for fatigue, if I like the party I am with,—nothing at
+all, literally.  You will hardly understand me, perhaps, M. Delabordeau;
+but I do not see any reason why I, as a young woman, should not make any
+journey that is practicable for a young man.”
+
+“Ah! dat is great resolution for you, mees.”
+
+“I mean as far as fatigue is concerned.  You are a Frenchman, and belong
+to the nation that is at the head of all human civilisation—”
+
+M. Delabordeau took off his hat and bowed low, to the peak of his donkey
+saddle.  He dearly loved to hear his country praised, as Miss Dawkins was
+aware.
+
+“And I am sure you must agree with me,” continued Miss Dawkins, “that the
+time is gone by for women to consider themselves helpless animals, or to
+be so considered by others.”
+
+“Mees Dawkins vould never be considered, not in any times at all, to be
+one helpless animal,” said M. Delabordeau civilly.
+
+“I do not, at any rate, intend to be so regarded,” said she.  “It suits
+me to travel alone; not that I am averse to society; quite the contrary;
+if I meet pleasant people I am always ready to join them.  But it suits
+me to travel without any permanent party, and I do not see why false
+shame should prevent my seeing the world as thoroughly as though I
+belonged to the other sex.  Why should it, M. Delabordeau?”
+
+M. Delabordeau declared that he did not see any reason why it should.
+
+“I am passionately anxious to stand upon Mount Sinai,” continued Miss
+Dawkins; “to press with my feet the earliest spot in sacred history, of
+the identity of which we are certain; to feel within me the awe-inspiring
+thrill of that thrice sacred hour!”
+
+The Frenchman looked as though he did not quite understand her, but he
+said that it would be magnifique.
+
+“You have already made up your party I suppose, M. Delabordeau?”
+
+M. Delabordeau gave the names of two Frenchmen and one Englishman who
+were going with him.
+
+“Upon my word it is a great temptation to join you,” said Miss Dawkins,
+“only for that horrid Englishman.”
+
+“Vat, Mr. Stanley?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t mean any disrespect to Mr. Stanley.  The horridness I speak
+of does not attach to him personally, but to his stiff, respectable,
+ungainly, well-behaved, irrational, and uncivilised country.  You see I
+am not very patriotic.”
+
+“Not quite so much as my friend, Mr. Damer.”
+
+“Ha! ha! ha! an excellent creature, isn’t he?  And so they all are, dear
+creatures.  But then they are so backward.  They are most anxious that I
+should join them up the Nile, but—,” and then Miss Dawkins shrugged her
+shoulders gracefully, and, as she flattered herself, like a Frenchwoman.
+After that they rode on in silence for a few moments.
+
+“Yes, I must see Mount Sinai,” said Miss Dawkins, and then sighed deeply.
+M. Delabordeau, notwithstanding that his country does stand at the head
+of all human civilisation, was not courteous enough to declare that if
+Miss Dawkins would join his party across the desert, nothing would be
+wanting to make his beatitude in this world perfect.
+
+Their road from the village of the chicken-hatching ovens lay up along
+the left bank of the Nile, through an immense grove of lofty palm-trees,
+looking out from among which our visitors could ever and anon see the
+heads of the two great Pyramids;—that is, such of them could see it as
+felt any solicitude in the matter.
+
+It is astonishing how such things lose their great charm as men find
+themselves in their close neighbourhood.  To one living in New York or
+London, how ecstatic is the interest inspired by these huge structures.
+One feels that no price would be too high to pay for seeing them as long
+as time and distance, and the world’s inexorable task-work, forbid such a
+visit.  How intense would be the delight of climbing over the wondrous
+handiwork of those wondrous architects so long since dead; how thrilling
+the awe with which one would penetrate down into their interior
+caves—those caves in which lay buried the bones of ancient kings, whose
+very names seem to have come to us almost from another world!
+
+But all these feelings become strangely dim, their acute edges
+wonderfully worn, as the subjects which inspired them are brought near to
+us.  “Ah! so those are the Pyramids, are they?” says the traveller, when
+the first glimpse of them is shown to him from the window of a railway
+carriage.  “Dear me; they don’t look so very high, do they?  For Heaven’s
+sake put the blind down, or we shall be destroyed by the dust.”  And then
+the ecstasy and keen delight of the Pyramids has vanished for ever.
+
+Our friends, therefore, who for weeks past had seen from a distance,
+though they had not yet visited them, did not seem to have any strong
+feeling on the subject as they trotted through the grove of palm-trees.
+Mr. Damer had not yet escaped from his wife, who was still fretful from
+the result of her little accident.
+
+“It was all the chattering of that Miss Dawkins,” said Mrs. Damer.  “She
+would not let me attend to what I was doing.”
+
+“Miss Dawkins is an ass,” said her husband.
+
+“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.”
+
+“How on earth we are to eat and drink with those nasty Arab people around
+us, I can’t conceive.  They tell me we shall be eaten up by them.  But,
+Fanny, what has Mr. Ingram been saying to you all the day?”
+
+“What has he been saying, mamma?  Oh!  I don’t know;—a hundred things, I
+dare say.  But he has not been talking to me all the time.”
+
+“I think he has, Fanny, nearly, since we crossed the river.  Oh, dear!
+oh, dear! this animal does hurt me so!  Every time he moves he flings his
+head about, and that gives me such a bump.”  And then Fanny commiserated
+her mother’s sufferings, and in her commiseration contrived to elude any
+further questionings as to Mr. Ingram’s conversation.
+
+“Majestic piles, are they not?” said Miss Dawkins, who, having changed
+her companion, allowed her mind to revert from Mount Sinai to the
+Pyramids.  They were now riding through cultivated ground, with the vast
+extent of the sands of Libya before them.  The two Pyramids were standing
+on the margin of the sand, with the head of the recumbent sphynx plainly
+visible between them.  But no idea can be formed of the size of this
+immense figure till it is visited much more closely.  The body is covered
+with sand, and the head and neck alone stand above the surface of the
+ground.  They were still two miles distant, and the sphynx as yet was but
+an obscure mount between the two vast Pyramids.
+
+“Immense piles!” said Miss Dawkins, repeating her own words.
+
+“Yes, they are large,” said Mr. Ingram, who did not choose to indulge in
+enthusiasm in the presence of Miss Dawkins.
+
+“Enormous!  What a grand idea!—eh, Mr. Ingram?  The human race does not
+create such things as those nowadays!”
+
+“No, indeed,” he answered; “but perhaps we create better things.”
+
+“Better!  You do not mean to say, Mr. Ingram, that you are an
+utilitarian.  I do, in truth, hope better things of you than that.  Yes!
+steam mills are better, no doubt, and mechanics’ institutes and penny
+newspapers.  But is nothing to be valued but what is useful?”  And Miss
+Dawkins, in the height of her enthusiasm, switched her donkey severely
+over the shoulder.
+
+“I might, perhaps, have said also that we create more beautiful things,”
+said Mr. Ingram.
+
+“But we cannot create older things.”
+
+“No, certainly; we cannot do that.”
+
+“Nor can we imbue what we do create with the grand associations which
+environ those piles with so intense an interest.  Think of the mighty
+dead, Mr. Ingram, and of their great homes when living.  Think of the
+hands which it took to raise those huge blocks—”
+
+“And of the lives which it cost.”
+
+“Doubtless.  The tyranny and invincible power of the royal architects add
+to the grandeur of the idea.  One would not wish to have back the kings
+of Egypt.”
+
+“Well, no; they would be neither useful nor beautiful.”
+
+“Perhaps not; and I do not wish to be picturesque at the expense of my
+fellow-creatures.”
+
+“I doubt, even, whether they would be picturesque.”
+
+“You know what I mean, Mr. Ingram.  But the associations of such names,
+and the presence of the stupendous works with which they are connected,
+fill the soul with awe.  Such, at least, is the effect with mine.”
+
+“I fear that my tendencies, Miss Dawkins, are more realistic than your
+own.”
+
+“You belong to a young country, Mr. Ingram, and are naturally prone to
+think of material life.  The necessity of living looms large before you.”
+
+“Very large, indeed, Miss Dawkins.”
+
+“Whereas with us, with some of us at least, the material aspect has given
+place to one in which poetry and enthusiasm prevail.  To such among us
+the associations of past times are very dear.  Cheops, to me, is more
+than Napoleon Bonaparte.”
+
+“That is more than most of your countrymen can say, at any rate, just at
+present.”
+
+“I am a woman,” continued Miss Dawkins.
+
+Mr. Ingram took off his hat in acknowledgment both of the announcement
+and of the fact.
+
+“And to us it is not given—not given as yet—to share in the great deeds
+of the present.  The envy of your sex has driven us from the paths which
+lead to honour.  But the deeds of the past are as much ours as yours.”
+
+“Oh, quite as much.”
+
+“’Tis to your country that we look for enfranchisement from this
+thraldom.  Yes, Mr. Ingram, the women of America have that strength of
+mind which has been wanting to those of Europe.  In the United States
+woman will at last learn to exercise her proper mission.”
+
+Mr. Ingram expressed a sincere wish that such might be the case; and then
+wondering at the ingenuity with which Miss Dawkins had travelled round
+from Cheops and his Pyramid to the rights of women in America, he
+contrived to fall back, under the pretence of asking after the ailments
+of Mrs. Damer.
+
+And now at last they were on the sand, in the absolute desert, making
+their way up to the very foot of the most northern of the two Pyramids.
+They were by this time surrounded by a crowd of Arab guides, or Arabs
+professing to be guides, who had already ascertained that Mr. Damer was
+the chief of the party, and were accordingly driving him almost to
+madness by the offers of their services, and their assurance that he
+could not possibly see the outside or the inside of either structure, or
+even remain alive upon the ground, unless he at once accepted their
+offers made at their own prices.
+
+“Get away, will you?” said he.  “I don’t want any of you, and I won’t
+have you!  If you take hold of me I’ll shoot you!”  This was said to one
+specially energetic Arab, who, in his efforts to secure his prey, had
+caught hold of Mr. Damer by the leg.
+
+“Yes, yes, I say!  Englishmen always take me;—me—me, and then no break
+him leg.  Yes—yes—yes;—I go.  Master, say yes.  Only one leetle ten
+shillings!”
+
+“Abdallah!” shouted Mr. Damer, “why don’t you take this man away?  Why
+don’t you make him understand that if all the Pyramids depended on it, I
+would not give him sixpence!”
+
+And then Abdallah, thus invoked, came up, and explained to the man in
+Arabic that he would gain his object more surely if he would behave
+himself a little more quietly; a hint which the man took for one minute,
+and for one minute only.
+
+And then poor Mrs. Damer replied to an application for backsheish by the
+gift of a sixpence.  Unfortunate woman!  The word backsheish means, I
+believe, a gift; but it has come in Egypt to signify money, and is
+eternally dinned into the ears of strangers by Arab suppliants.  Mrs.
+Damer ought to have known better, as, during the last six weeks she had
+never shown her face out of Shepheard’s Hotel without being pestered for
+backsheish; but she was tired and weak, and foolishly thought to rid
+herself of the man who was annoying her.
+
+No sooner had the coin dropped from her hand into that of the Arab, than
+she was surrounded by a cluster of beggars, who loudly made their
+petitions as though they would, each of them, individually be injured if
+treated with less liberality than that first comer.  They took hold of
+her donkey, her bridle, her saddle, her legs, and at last her arms and
+hands, screaming for backsheish in voices that were neither sweet nor
+mild.
+
+In her dismay she did give away sundry small coins—all, probably, that
+she had about her; but this only made the matter worse.  Money was going,
+and each man, by sufficient energy, might hope to get some of it.  They
+were very energetic, and so frightened the poor lady that she would
+certainly have fallen, had she not been kept on her seat by the pressure
+around her.
+
+“Oh, dear! oh, dear! get away,” she cried.  “I haven’t got any more;
+indeed I haven’t.  Go away, I tell you!  Mr. Damer! oh, Mr. Damer!” and
+then, in the excess of her agony, she uttered one loud, long, and
+continuous shriek.
+
+Up came Mr. Damer; up came Abdallah; up came M. Delabordeau; up came Mr.
+Ingram, and at last she was rescued.  “You shouldn’t go away and leave me
+to the mercy of these nasty people.  As to that Abdallah, he is of no use
+to anybody.”
+
+“Why you bodder de good lady, you dem blackguard?” said Abdallah, raising
+his stick, as though he were going to lay them all low with a blow.  “Now
+you get noting, you tief!”
+
+The Arabs for a moment retired to a little distance, like flies driven
+from a sugar-bowl; but it was easy to see that, like the flies, they
+would return at the first vacant moment.
+
+And now they had reached the very foot of the Pyramids and proceeded to
+dismount from their donkeys.  Their intention was first to ascend to the
+top, then to come down to their banquet, and after that to penetrate into
+the interior.  And all this would seem to be easy of performance.  The
+Pyramid is undoubtedly high, but it is so constructed as to admit of
+climbing without difficulty.  A lady mounting it would undoubtedly need
+some assistance, but any man possessed of moderate activity would require
+no aid at all.
+
+But our friends were at once imbued with the tremendous nature of the
+task before them.  A sheikh of the Arabs came forth, who communicated
+with them through Abdallah.  The work could be done, no doubt, he said;
+but a great many men would be wanted to assist.  Each lady must have four
+Arabs, and each gentlemen three; and then, seeing that the work would be
+peculiarly severe on this special day, each of these numerous Arabs must
+be remunerated by some very large number of piastres.
+
+Mr. Damer, who was by no means a close man in his money dealings, opened
+his eyes with surprise, and mildly expostulated; M. Delabordeau, who was
+rather a close man in his reckonings, immediately buttoned up his
+breeches pocket and declared that he should decline to mount the Pyramid
+at all at that price; and then Mr. Ingram descended to the combat.
+
+The protestations of the men were fearful.  They declared, with loud
+voices, eager actions, and manifold English oaths, that an attempt was
+being made to rob them.  They had a right to demand the sums which they
+were charging, and it was a shame that English gentlemen should come and
+take the bread out of their mouths.  And so they screeched, gesticulated,
+and swore, and frightened poor Mrs. Damer almost into fits.
+
+But at last it was settled and away they started, the sheikh declaring
+that the bargain had been made at so low a rate as to leave him not one
+piastre for himself.  Each man had an Arab on each side of him, and Miss
+Dawkins and Miss Damer had each, in addition, one behind.  Mrs. Damer was
+so frightened as altogether to have lost all ambition to ascend.  She sat
+below on a fragment of stone, with the three dragomans standing around
+her as guards; but even with the three dragomans the attacks on her were
+so frequent, and as she declared afterwards she was so bewildered, that
+she never had time to remember that she had come there from England to
+see the Pyramids, and that she was now immediately under them.
+
+The boys, utterly ignoring their guides, scrambled up quicker than the
+Arabs could follow them.  Mr. Damer started off at a pace which soon
+brought him to the end of his tether, and from that point was dragged up
+by the sheer strength of his assistants; thereby accomplishing the wishes
+of the men, who induce their victims to start as rapidly as possible, in
+order that they may soon find themselves helpless from want of wind.  Mr.
+Ingram endeavoured to attach himself to Fanny, and she would have been
+nothing loth to have him at her right hand instead of the hideous brown,
+shrieking, one-eyed Arab who took hold of her.  But it was soon found
+that any such arrangement was impossible.  Each guide felt that if he
+lost his own peculiar hold he would lose his prey, and held on,
+therefore, with invincible tenacity.  Miss Dawkins looked, too, as though
+she had thought to be attended to by some Christian cavalier, but no
+Christian cavalier was forthcoming.  M. Delabordeau was the wisest, for
+he took the matter quietly, did as he was bid, and allowed the guides
+nearly to carry him to the top of the edifice.
+
+“Ha! so this is the top of the Pyramid, is it?” said Mr. Damer, bringing
+out his words one by one, being terribly out of breath.  “Very wonderful,
+very wonderful, indeed!”
+
+“It is wonderful,” said Miss Dawkins, whose breath had not failed her in
+the least, “very wonderful, indeed!  Only think, Mr. Damer, you might
+travel on for days and days, till days became months, through those
+interminable sands, and yet you would never come to the end of them.  Is
+it not quite stupendous?”
+
+“Ah, yes, quite,—puff, puff”—said Mr. Damer striving to regain his
+breath.
+
+Mr. Damer was now at her disposal; weak and worn with toil and travel,
+out of breath, and with half his manhood gone; if ever she might prevail
+over him so as to procure from his mouth an assent to that Nile
+proposition, it would be now.  And after all, that Nile proposition was
+the best one now before her.  She did not quite like the idea of starting
+off across the Great Desert without any lady, and was not sure that she
+was prepared to be fallen in love with by M. Delabordeau, even if there
+should ultimately be any readiness on the part of that gentleman to
+perform the rôle of lover.  With Mr. Ingram the matter was different, nor
+was she so diffident of her own charms as to think it altogether
+impossible that she might succeed, in the teeth of that little chit,
+Fanny Damer.  That Mr. Ingram would join the party up the Nile she had
+very little doubt; and then there would be one place left for her.  She
+would thus, at any rate, become commingled with a most respectable
+family, who might be of material service to her.
+
+Thus actuated she commenced an earnest attack upon Mr. Damer.
+
+“Stupendous!” she said again, for she was fond of repeating favourite
+words.  “What a wondrous race must have been those Egyptian kings of
+old!”
+
+“I dare say they were,” said Mr. Damer, wiping his brow as he sat upon a
+large loose stone, a fragment lying on the flat top of the Pyramid, one
+of those stones with which the complete apex was once made, or was once
+about to be made.
+
+“A magnificent race! so gigantic in their conceptions!  Their ideas
+altogether overwhelm us poor, insignificant, latter-day mortals.  They
+built these vast Pyramids; but for us, it is task enough to climb to
+their top.”
+
+“Quite enough,” ejaculated Mr. Damer.
+
+But Mr. Damer would not always remain weak and out of breath, and it was
+absolutely necessary for Miss Dawkins to hurry away from Cheops and his
+tomb, to Thebes and Karnac.
+
+“After seeing this it is impossible for any one with a spark of
+imagination to leave Egypt without going farther a-field.”
+
+Mr. Damer merely wiped his brow and grunted.  This Miss Dawkins took as a
+signal of weakness, and went on with her task perseveringly.
+
+“For myself, I have resolved to go up, at any rate, as far as Asouan and
+the first cataract.  I had thought of acceding to the wishes of a party
+who are going across the Great Desert by Mount Sinai to Jerusalem; but
+the kindness of yourself and Mrs. Damer is so great, and the prospect of
+joining in your boat is so pleasurable, that I have made up my mind to
+accept your very kind offer.”
+
+This, it will be acknowledged, was bold on the part of Miss Dawkins; but
+what will not audacity effect?  To use the slang of modern language,
+cheek carries everything nowadays.  And whatever may have been Miss
+Dawkins’s deficiencies, in this virtue she was not deficient.
+
+“I have made up my mind to accept your very kind offer,” she said,
+shining on Mr. Damer with her blandest smile.
+
+What was a stout, breathless, perspiring, middle-aged gentleman to do
+under such circumstances?  Mr. Damer was a man who, in most matters, had
+his own way.  That his wife should have given such an invitation without
+consulting him, was, he knew, quite impossible.  She would as soon have
+thought of asking all those Arab guides to accompany them.  Nor was it to
+be thought of that he should allow himself to be kidnapped into such an
+arrangement by the impudence of any Miss Dawkins.  But there was, he
+felt, a difficulty in answering such a proposition from a young lady with
+a direct negative, especially while he was so scant of breath.  So he
+wiped his brow again, and looked at her.
+
+“But I can only agree to this on one understanding,” continued Miss
+Dawkins, “and that is, that I am allowed to defray my own full share of
+the expense of the journey.”
+
+Upon hearing this Mr. Damer thought that he saw his way out of the wood.
+“Wherever I go, Miss Dawkins, I am always the paymaster myself,” and this
+he contrived to say with some sternness, palpitating though he still was;
+and the sternness which was deficient in his voice he endeavoured to put
+into his countenance.
+
+But he did not know Miss Dawkins.  “Oh, Mr. Damer,” she said, and as she
+spoke her smile became almost blander than it was before; “oh, Mr. Damer,
+I could not think of suffering you to be so liberal; I could not, indeed.
+But I shall be quite content that you should pay everything, and let me
+settle with you in one sum afterwards.”
+
+Mr. Damer’s breath was now rather more under his own command.  “I am
+afraid, Miss Dawkins,” he said, “that Mrs. Damer’s weak state of health
+will not admit of such an arrangement.”
+
+“What, about the paying?”
+
+“Not only as to that, but we are a family party, Miss Dawkins; and great
+as would be the benefit of your society to all of us, in Mrs. Damer’s
+present state of health, I am afraid—in short, you would not find it
+agreeable.—And therefore—” this he added, seeing that she was still about
+to persevere—“I fear that we must forego the advantage you offer.”
+
+And then, looking into his face, Miss Dawkins did perceive that even her
+audacity would not prevail.
+
+“Oh, very well,” she said, and moving from the stone on which she had
+been sitting, she walked off, carrying her head very high, to a corner of
+the Pyramid from which she could look forth alone towards the sands of
+Libya.
+
+In the mean time another little overture was being made on the top of the
+same Pyramid,—an overture which was not received quite in the same
+spirit.  While Mr. Damer was recovering his breath for the sake of
+answering Miss Dawkins, Miss Damer had walked to the further corner of
+the square platform on which they were placed, and there sat herself down
+with her face turned towards Cairo.  Perhaps it was not singular that Mr.
+Ingram should have followed her.
+
+This would have been very well if a dozen Arabs had not also followed
+them.  But as this was the case, Mr. Ingram had to play his game under
+some difficulty.  He had no sooner seated himself beside her than they
+came and stood directly in front of the seat, shutting out the view, and
+by no means improving the fragrance of the air around them.
+
+“And this, then, Miss Damer, will be our last excursion together,” he
+said, in his tenderest, softest tone.
+
+“De good Englishman will gib de poor Arab one little backsheish,” said an
+Arab, putting out his hand and shaking Mr. Ingram’s shoulder.
+
+“Yes, yes, yes; him gib backsheish,” said another.
+
+“Him berry good man,” said a third, putting up his filthy hand, and
+touching Mr. Ingram’s face.
+
+“And young lady berry good, too; she give backsheish to poor Arab.”
+
+“Yes,” said a fourth, preparing to take a similar liberty with Miss
+Damer.
+
+This was too much for Mr. Ingram.  He had already used very positive
+language in his endeavour to assure his tormentors that they would not
+get a piastre from him.  But this only changed their soft persuasions
+into threats.  Upon hearing which, and upon seeing what the man attempted
+to do in his endeavour to get money from Miss Damer, he raised his stick,
+and struck first one and then the other as violently as he could upon
+their heads.
+
+Any ordinary civilised men would have been stunned by such blows, for
+they fell on the bare foreheads of the Arabs; but the objects of the
+American’s wrath merely skulked away; and the others, convinced by the
+only arguments which they understood, followed in pursuit of victims who
+might be less pugnacious.
+
+It is hard for a man to be at once tender and pugnacious—to be
+sentimental, while he is putting forth his physical strength with all the
+violence in his power.  It is difficult, also, for him to be gentle
+instantly after having been in a rage.  So he changed his tactics at the
+moment, and came to the point at once in a manner befitting his present
+state of mind.
+
+“Those vile wretches have put me in such a heat,” he said, “that I hardly
+know what I am saying.  But the fact is this, Miss Damer, I cannot leave
+Cairo without knowing—.  You understand what I mean, Miss Damer.”
+
+“Indeed I do not, Mr. Ingram; except that I am afraid you mean nonsense.”
+
+“Yes, you do; you know that I love you.  I am sure you must know it.  At
+any rate you know it now.”
+
+“Mr. Ingram, you should not talk in such a way.”
+
+“Why should I not?  But the truth is, Fanny, I can talk in no other way.
+I do love you dearly.  Can you love me well enough to go and be my wife
+in a country far away from your own?”
+
+Before she left the top of the Pyramid Fanny Damer had said that she
+would try.
+
+Mr. Ingram was now a proud and happy man, and seemed to think the steps
+of the Pyramid too small for his elastic energy.  But Fanny feared that
+her troubles were to come.  There was papa—that terrible bugbear on all
+such occasions.  What would papa say?  She was sure her papa would not
+allow her to marry and go so far away from her own family and country.
+For herself, she liked the Americans—always had liked them; so she
+said;—would desire nothing better than to live among them.  But papa!
+And Fanny sighed as she felt that all the recognised miseries of a young
+lady in love were about to fall upon her.
+
+Nevertheless, at her lover’s instance, she promised, and declared, in
+twenty different loving phrases, that nothing on earth should ever make
+her false to her love or to her lover.
+
+“Fanny, where are you?  Why are you not ready to come down?” shouted Mr.
+Damer, not in the best of tempers.  He felt that he had almost been
+unkind to an unprotected female, and his heart misgave him.  And yet it
+would have misgiven him more had he allowed himself to be entrapped by
+Miss Dawkins.
+
+“I am quite ready, papa,” said Fanny, running up to him—for it may be
+understood that there is quite room enough for a young lady to run on the
+top of the Pyramid.
+
+“I am sure I don’t know where you have been all the time,” said Mr.
+Damer; “and where are those two boys?”
+
+Fanny pointed to the top of the other Pyramid, and there they were,
+conspicuous with their red caps.
+
+“And M. Delabordeau?”
+
+“Oh! he has gone down, I think;—no, he is there with Miss Dawkins.”  And
+in truth Miss Dawkins was leaning on his arm most affectionately, as she
+stooped over and looked down upon the ruins below her.
+
+“And where is that fellow, Ingram?” said Mr. Damer, looking about him.
+“He is always out of the way when he’s wanted.”
+
+To this Fanny said nothing.  Why should she?  She was not Mr. Ingram’s
+keeper.
+
+And then they all descended, each again with his proper number of Arabs
+to hurry and embarrass him; and they found Mr. Damer at the bottom, like
+a piece of sugar covered with flies.  She was heard to declare afterwards
+that she would not go to the Pyramids again, not if they were to be given
+to her for herself, as ornaments for her garden.
+
+The picnic lunch among the big stones at the foot of the Pyramid was not
+a very gay affair.  Miss Dawkins talked more than any one else, being
+determined to show that she bore her defeat gallantly.  Her conversation,
+however, was chiefly addressed to M. Delabordeau, and he seemed to think
+more of his cold chicken and ham than he did of her wit and attention.
+
+Fanny hardly spoke a word.  There was her father before her and she could
+not eat, much less talk, as she thought of all that she would have to go
+through.  What would he say to the idea of having an American for a
+son-in-law?
+
+Nor was Mr. Ingram very lively.  A young man when he has been just
+accepted, never is so.  His happiness under the present circumstances
+was, no doubt, intense, but it was of a silent nature.
+
+And then the interior of the building had to be visited.  To tell the
+truth none of the party would have cared to perform this feat had it not
+been for the honour of the thing.  To have come from Paris, New York, or
+London, to the Pyramids, and then not to have visited the very tomb of
+Cheops, would have shown on the part of all of them an indifference to
+subjects of interest which would have been altogether fatal to their
+character as travellers.  And so a party for the interior was made up.
+
+Miss Damer when she saw the aperture through which it was expected that
+she should descend, at once declared for staying with her mother.  Miss
+Dawkins, however, was enthusiastic for the journey.  “Persons with so
+very little command over their nerves might really as well stay at home,”
+she said to Mr. Ingram, who glowered at her dreadfully for expressing
+such an opinion about his Fanny.
+
+This entrance into the Pyramids is a terrible task, which should be
+undertaken by no lady.  Those who perform it have to creep down, and then
+to be dragged up, through infinite dirt, foul smells, and bad air; and
+when they have done it, they see nothing.  But they do earn the
+gratification of saying that they have been inside a Pyramid.
+
+“Well, I’ve done that once,” said Mr. Damer, coming out, “and I do not
+think that any one will catch me doing it again.  I never was in such a
+filthy place in my life.”
+
+“Oh, Fanny! I am so glad you did not go; I am sure it is not fit for
+ladies,” said poor Mrs. Damer, forgetful of her friend Miss Dawkins.
+
+“I should have been ashamed of myself,” said Miss Dawkins, bristling up,
+and throwing back her head as she stood, “if I had allowed any
+consideration to have prevented my visiting such a spot.  If it be not
+improper for men to go there, how can it be improper for women?”
+
+“I did not say improper, my dear,” said Mrs. Damer, apologetically.
+
+“And as for the fatigue, what can a woman be worth who is afraid to
+encounter as much as I have now gone through for the sake of visiting the
+last resting-place of such a king as Cheops?”  And Miss Dawkins, as she
+pronounced the last words, looked round her with disdain upon poor Fanny
+Damer.
+
+“But I meant the dirt,” said Mrs. Damer.
+
+“Dirt!” ejaculated Miss Dawkins, and then walked away.  Why should she
+now submit her high tone of feeling to the Damers, or why care longer for
+their good opinion?  Therefore she scattered contempt around her as she
+ejaculated the last word, “dirt.”
+
+And then the return home!  “I know I shall never get there,” said Mrs.
+Damer, looking piteously up into her husband’s face.
+
+“Nonsense, my dear; nonsense; you must get there.”  Mrs. Damer groaned,
+and acknowledged in her heart that she must,—either dead or alive.
+
+“And, Jefferson,” said Fanny, whispering—for there had been a moment
+since their descent in which she had been instructed to call him by his
+Christian name—“never mind talking to me going home.  I will ride by
+mamma.  Do you go with papa and put him in good humour; and it he says
+anything about the lords and the bishops, don’t you contradict him, you
+know.”
+
+What will not a man do for love?  Mr. Ingram promised.
+
+And in this way they started; the two boys led the van; then came Mr.
+Damer and Mr. Ingram, unusually and unpatriotically acquiescent as to
+England’s aristocratic propensities; then Miss Dawkins riding, alas!
+alone; after her, M. Delabordeau, also alone,—the ungallant Frenchman!
+And the rear was brought up by Mrs. Damer and her daughter, flanked on
+each side by a dragoman, with a third dragoman behind them.
+
+And in this order they went back to Cairo, riding their donkeys, and
+crossing the ferry solemnly, and, for the most part, silently.  Mr.
+Ingram did talk, as he had an important object in view,—that of putting
+Mr. Damer into a good humour.
+
+In this he succeeded so well that by the time they had remounted, after
+crossing the Nile, Mr. Damer opened his heart to his companion on the
+subject that was troubling him, and told him all about Miss Dawkins.
+
+“I don’t see why we should have a companion that we don’t like for eight
+or ten weeks, merely because it seems rude to refuse a lady.”
+
+“Indeed, I agree with you,” said Mr. Ingram; “I should call it
+weak-minded to give way in such a case.”
+
+“My daughter does not like her at all,” continued Mr. Damer.
+
+“Nor would she be a nice companion for Miss Damer; not according to my
+way of thinking,” said Mr. Ingram.
+
+“And as to my having asked her, or Mrs. Damer having asked her!  Why, God
+bless my soul, it is pure invention on the woman’s part!”
+
+“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Mr. Ingram; “I must say she plays her game well;
+but then she is an old soldier, and has the benefit of experience.”  What
+would Miss Dawkins have said had she known that Mr. Ingram called her an
+old soldier?
+
+“I don’t like the kind of thing at all,” said Mr. Damer, who was very
+serious upon the subject.  “You see the position in which I am placed.  I
+am forced to be very rude, or—”
+
+“I don’t call it rude at all.”
+
+“Disobliging, then; or else I must have all my comfort invaded and
+pleasure destroyed by, by, by—”  And Mr. Damer paused, being at a loss
+for an appropriate name for Miss Dawkins.
+
+“By an unprotected female,” suggested Mr. Ingram.
+
+“Yes, just so.  I am as fond of pleasant company as anybody; but then I
+like to choose it myself.”
+
+“So do I,” said Mr. Ingram, thinking of his own choice.
+
+“Now, Ingram, if you would join us, we should be delighted.”
+
+“Upon my word, sir, the offer is too flattering,” said Ingram,
+hesitatingly; for he felt that he could not undertake such a journey
+until Mr. Damer knew on what terms he stood with Fanny.
+
+“You are a terrible democrat,” said Mr. Damer, laughing; “but then, on
+that matter, you know, we could agree to differ.”
+
+“Exactly so,” said Mr. Ingram, who had not collected his thoughts or made
+up his mind as to what he had better say and do, on the spur of the
+moment.
+
+“Well, what do you say to it?” said Mr. Damer, encouragingly.  But Ingram
+paused before he answered.
+
+“For Heaven’s sake, my dear fellow, don’t have the slightest hesitation
+in refusing, if you don’t like the plan.”
+
+“The fact is, Mr. Damer, I should like it too well.”
+
+“Like it too well?”
+
+“Yes, sir, and I may as well tell you now as later.  I had intended this
+evening to have asked for your permission to address your daughter.”
+
+“God bless my soul!” said Mr. Damer, looking as though a totally new idea
+had now been opened to him.
+
+“And under these circumstances, I will now wait and see whether or no you
+will renew your offer.”
+
+“God bless my soul!” said Mr. Damer, again.  It often does strike an old
+gentleman as very odd that any man should fall in love with his daughter,
+whom he has not ceased to look upon as a child.  The case is generally
+quite different with mothers.  They seem to think that every young man
+must fall in love with their girls.
+
+“And have you said anything to Fanny about this?” asked Mr. Damer.
+
+“Yes, sir, I have her permission to speak to you.”
+
+“God bless my soul!” said Mr. Damer; and by this time they had arrived at
+Shepheard’s Hotel.
+
+“Oh, mamma,” said Fanny, as soon as she found herself alone with her
+mother that evening, “I have something that I must tell you.”
+
+“Oh, Fanny, don’t tell me anything to-night, for I am a great deal too
+tired to listen.”
+
+“But oh, mamma, pray;—you must listen to this; indeed you must.”  And
+Fanny knelt down at her mother’s knee, and looked beseechingly up into
+her face.
+
+“What is it, Fanny?  You know that all my bones are sore, and I am so
+tired that I am almost dead.”
+
+“Mamma, Mr. Ingram has—”
+
+“Has what, my dear? has he done anything wrong?”
+
+“No, mamma: but he has;—he has proposed to me.”  And Fanny, bursting into
+tears, hid her face in her mother’s lap.
+
+And thus the story was told on both sides of the house.  On the next day,
+as a matter of course, all the difficulties and dangers of such a
+marriage as that which was now projected were insisted on by both father
+and mother.  It was improper; it would cause a severing of the family not
+to be thought of; it would be an alliance of a dangerous nature, and not
+at all calculated to insure happiness; and, in short, it was impossible.
+On that day, therefore, they all went to bed very unhappy.  But on the
+next day, as was also a matter of course, seeing that there were no
+pecuniary difficulties, the mother and father were talked over, and Mr.
+Ingram was accepted as a son-in-law.  It need hardly be said that the
+offer of a place in Mr. Damer’s boat was again made, and that on this
+occasion it was accepted without hesitation.
+
+There was an American Protestant clergyman resident in Cairo, with whom,
+among other persons, Miss Dawkins had become acquainted.  Upon this
+gentleman or upon his wife Miss Dawkins called a few days after the
+journey to the Pyramid, and finding him in his study, thus performed her
+duty to her neighbour,—
+
+“You know your countryman Mr. Ingram, I think?” said she.
+
+“Oh, yes; very intimately.”
+
+“If you have any regard for him, Mr. Burton,” such was the gentleman’s
+name, “I think you should put him on his guard.”
+
+“On his guard against what?” said Mr. Burton with a serious air, for
+there was something serious in the threat of impending misfortune as
+conveyed by Miss Dawkins.
+
+“Why,” said she, “those Damers, I fear, are dangerous people.”
+
+“Do you mean that they will borrow money of him?”
+
+“Oh, no; not that, exactly; but they are clearly setting their cap at
+him.”
+
+“Setting their cap at him?”
+
+“Yes; there is a daughter, you know; a little chit of a thing; and I fear
+Mr. Ingram may be caught before he knows where he is.  It would be such a
+pity, you know.  He is going up the river with them, I hear.  That, in
+his place, is very foolish.  They asked me, but I positively refused.”
+
+Mr. Burton remarked that “In such a matter as that Mr. Ingram would be
+perfectly able to take care of himself.”
+
+“Well, perhaps so; but seeing what was going on, I thought it my duty to
+tell you.”  And so Miss Dawkins took her leave.
+
+Mr. Ingram did go up the Nile with the Damers, as did an old friend of
+the Damers who arrived from England.  And a very pleasant trip they had
+of it.  And, as far as the present historian knows, the two lovers were
+shortly afterwards married in England.
+
+Poor Miss Dawkins was left in Cairo for some time on her beam ends.  But
+she was one of those who are not easily vanquished.  After an interval of
+ten days she made acquaintance with an Irish family—having utterly failed
+in moving the hard heart of M. Delabordeau—and with these she proceeded
+to Constantinople.  They consisted of two brothers and a sister, and
+were, therefore, very convenient for matrimonial purposes.  But
+nevertheless, when I last heard of Miss Dawkins, she was still an
+unprotected female.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN UNPROTECTED FEMALE AT THE
+PYRAMIDS***
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+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids, by
+Anthony Trollope
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
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+
+
+
+
+Title: An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids
+
+
+Author: Anthony Trollope
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 16, 2015  [eBook #3710]
+[This file was first posted on July 31, 2001]
+
+Language: English
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+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN UNPROTECTED FEMALE AT THE
+PYRAMIDS***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1864 Chapman and Hall &ldquo;Tales of All
+Countries&rdquo; edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<h1>AN UNPROTECTED FEMALE AT THE PYRAMIDS</h1>
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the happy days when we were
+young, no description conveyed to us so complete an idea of
+mysterious reality as that of an Oriental city.&nbsp; We knew it
+was actually there, but had such vague notions of its ways and
+looks!&nbsp; Let any one remember his early impressions as to
+Bagdad or Grand Cairo, and then say if this was not so.&nbsp; It
+was probably taken from the &ldquo;Arabian Nights,&rdquo; and the
+picture produced was one of strange, fantastic, luxurious houses;
+of women who were either very young and very beautiful, or else
+very old and very cunning; but in either state exercising much
+more influence in life than women in the East do now; of
+good-natured, capricious, though sometimes tyrannical monarchs;
+and of life full of quaint mysteries, quite unintelligible in
+every phasis, and on that account the more picturesque.</p>
+<p>And perhaps Grand Cairo has thus filled us with more wonder
+even than Bagdad.&nbsp; We have been in a certain manner at home
+at Bagdad, but have only visited Grand Cairo occasionally.&nbsp;
+I know no place which was to me, in early years, so delightfully
+mysterious as Grand Cairo.</p>
+<p>But the route to India and Australia has changed all
+this.&nbsp; Men from all countries going to the East, now pass
+through Cairo, and its streets and costumes are no longer strange
+to us.&nbsp; It has become also a resort for invalids, or rather
+for those who fear that they may become invalids if they remain
+in a cold climate during the winter months.&nbsp; And thus at
+Cairo there is always to be found a considerable population of
+French, Americans, and of English.&nbsp; Oriental life is brought
+home to us, dreadfully diluted by western customs, and the
+delights of the &ldquo;Arabian Nights&rdquo; are shorn of half
+their value.&nbsp; When we have seen a thing it is never so
+magnificent to us as when it was half unknown.</p>
+<p>It is not much that we deign to learn from these
+Orientals,&mdash;we who glory in our civilisation.&nbsp; We do
+not copy their silence or their abstemiousness, nor that
+invariable mindfulness of his own personal dignity which always
+adheres to a Turk or to an Arab.&nbsp; We chatter as much at
+Cairo as elsewhere, and eat as much and drink as much, and dress
+ourselves generally in the same old ugly costume.&nbsp; But we do
+usually take upon ourselves to wear red caps, and we do ride on
+donkeys.</p>
+<p>Nor are the visitors from the West to Cairo by any means
+confined to the male sex.&nbsp; Ladies are to be seen in the
+streets quite regardless of the Mahommedan custom which presumes
+a veil to be necessary for an appearance in public; and, to tell
+the truth, the Mahommedans in general do not appear to be much
+shocked by their effrontery.</p>
+<p>A quarter of the town has in this way become inhabited by men
+wearing coats and waistcoats, and by women who are without veils;
+but the English tongue in Egypt finds its centre at
+Shepheard&rsquo;s Hotel.&nbsp; It is here that people congregate
+who are looking out for parties to visit with them the Upper
+Nile, and who are generally all smiles and courtesy; and here
+also are to be found they who have just returned from this
+journey, and who are often in a frame of mind towards their
+companions that is much less amiable.&nbsp; From hence, during
+the winter, a cort&eacute;ge proceeds almost daily to the
+pyramids, or to Memphis, or to the petrified forest, or to the
+City of the Sun.&nbsp; And then, again, four or five times a
+month the house is filled with young aspirants going out to
+India, male and female, full of valour and bloom; or with others
+coming home, no longer young, no longer aspiring, but laden with
+children and grievances.</p>
+<p>The party with whom we are at present concerned is not about
+to proceed further than the Pyramids, and we shall be able to go
+with them and return in one and the same day.</p>
+<p>It consisted chiefly of an English family, Mr. and Mrs. Damer,
+their daughter, and two young sons;&mdash;of these chiefly,
+because they were the nucleus to which the others had attached
+themselves as adherents; they had originated the journey, and in
+the whole management of it Mr. Damer regarded himself as the
+master.</p>
+<p>The adherents were, firstly, M. Delabordeau, a Frenchman, now
+resident in Cairo, who had given out that he was in some way
+concerned in the canal about to be made between the Mediterranean
+and the Red Sea.&nbsp; In discussion on this subject he had
+become acquainted with Mr. Damer; and although the latter
+gentleman, true to English interests, perpetually declared that
+the canal would never be made, and thus irritated M. Delabordeau
+not a little&mdash;nevertheless, some measure of friendship had
+grown up between them.</p>
+<p>There was also an American gentleman, Mr. Jefferson Ingram,
+who was comprising all countries and all nations in one grand
+tour, as American gentlemen so often do.&nbsp; He was young and
+good-looking, and had made himself especially agreeable to Mr.
+Damer, who had declared, more than once, that Mr. Ingram was by
+far the most rational American he had ever met.&nbsp; Mr. Ingram
+would listen to Mr. Damer by the half-hour as to the virtue of
+the British Constitution, and had even sat by almost with
+patience when Mr. Damer had expressed a doubt as to the good
+working of the United States&rsquo; scheme of
+policy,&mdash;which, in an American, was most wonderful.&nbsp;
+But some of the sojourners at Shepheard&rsquo;s had observed that
+Mr. Ingram was in the habit of talking with Miss Damer almost as
+much as with her father, and argued from that, that fond as the
+young man was of politics, he did sometimes turn his mind to
+other things also.</p>
+<p>And then there was Miss Dawkins.&nbsp; Now Miss Dawkins was an
+important person, both as to herself and as to her line of life,
+and she must be described.&nbsp; She was, in the first place, an
+unprotected female of about thirty years of age.&nbsp; As this is
+becoming an established profession, setting itself up as it were
+in opposition to the old world idea that women, like green peas,
+cannot come to perfection without supporting-sticks, it will be
+understood at once what were Miss Dawkins&rsquo;s
+sentiments.&nbsp; She considered&mdash;or at any rate so
+expressed herself&mdash;that peas could grow very well without
+sticks, and could not only grow thus unsupported, but could also
+make their way about the world without any incumbrance of sticks
+whatsoever.&nbsp; She did not intend, she said, to rival Ida
+Pfeiffer, seeing that she was attached in a moderate way to bed
+and board, and was attached to society in a manner almost more
+than moderate; but she had no idea of being prevented from seeing
+anything she wished to see because she had neither father, nor
+husband, nor brother available for the purpose of escort.&nbsp;
+She was a human creature, with arms and legs, she said; and she
+intended to use them.&nbsp; And this was all very well; but
+nevertheless she had a strong inclination to use the arms and
+legs of other people when she could make them serviceable.</p>
+<p>In person Miss Dawkins was not without attraction.&nbsp; I
+should exaggerate if I were to say that she was beautiful and
+elegant; but she was good looking, and not usually ill
+mannered.&nbsp; She was tall, and gifted with features rather
+sharp and with eyes very bright.&nbsp; Her hair was of the
+darkest shade of brown, and was always worn in bandeaux, very
+neatly.&nbsp; She appeared generally in black, though other
+circumstances did not lead one to suppose that she was in
+mourning; and then, no other travelling costume is so
+convenient!&nbsp; She always wore a dark broad-brimmed straw hat,
+as to the ribbons on which she was rather particular.&nbsp; She
+was very neat about her gloves and boots; and though it cannot be
+said that her dress was got up without reference to expense,
+there can be no doubt that it was not effected without
+considerable outlay,&mdash;and more considerable thought.</p>
+<p>Miss Dawkins&mdash;Sabrina Dawkins was her name, but she
+seldom had friends about her intimate enough to use the word
+Sabrina&mdash;was certainly a clever young woman.&nbsp; She could
+talk on most subjects, if not well, at least well enough to
+amuse.&nbsp; If she had not read much, she never showed any
+lamentable deficiency; she was good-humoured, as a rule, and
+could on occasions be very soft and winning.&nbsp; People who had
+known her long would sometimes say that she was selfish; but with
+new acquaintance she was forbearing and self-denying.</p>
+<p>With what income Miss Dawkins was blessed no one seemed to
+know.&nbsp; She lived like a gentlewoman, as far as outward
+appearance went, and never seemed to be in want; but some people
+would say that she knew very well how many sides there were to a
+shilling, and some enemy had once declared that she was an
+&ldquo;old soldier.&rdquo;&nbsp; Such was Miss Dawkins.</p>
+<p>She also, as well as Mr. Ingram and M. Delabordeau, had laid
+herself out to find the weak side of Mr. Damer.&nbsp; Mr. Damer,
+with all his family, was going up the Nile, and it was known that
+he had room for two in his boat over and above his own
+family.&nbsp; Miss Dawkins had told him that she had not quite
+made up her mind to undergo so great a fatigue, but that,
+nevertheless, she had a longing of the soul to see something of
+Nubia.&nbsp; To this Mr. Damer had answered nothing but
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; which Miss Dawkins had not found to be
+encouraging.</p>
+<p>But she had not on that account despaired.&nbsp; To a married
+man there are always two sides, and in this instance there was
+Mrs. Damer as well as Mr. Damer.&nbsp; When Mr. Damer said
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; Miss Dawkins sighed, and said, &ldquo;Yes,
+indeed!&rdquo; then smiled, and betook herself to Mrs. Damer.</p>
+<p>Now Mrs. Damer was soft-hearted, and also somewhat
+old-fashioned.&nbsp; She did not conceive any violent affection
+for Miss Dawkins, but she told her daughter that &ldquo;the
+single lady by herself was a very nice young woman, and that it
+was a thousand pities she should have to go about so much alone
+like.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Miss Damer had turned up her pretty nose, thinking, perhaps,
+how small was the chance that it ever should be her own lot to be
+an unprotected female.&nbsp; But Miss Dawkins carried her point
+at any rate as regarded the expedition to the Pyramids.</p>
+<p>Miss Damer, I have said, had a pretty nose.&nbsp; I may also
+say that she had pretty eyes, mouth, and chin, with other
+necessary appendages, all pretty.&nbsp; As to the two Master
+Damers, who were respectively of the ages of fifteen and sixteen,
+it may be sufficient to say that they were conspicuous for red
+caps and for the constancy with which they raced their
+donkeys.</p>
+<p>And now the donkeys, and the donkey boys, and the dragomans
+were all standing at the steps of Shepheard&rsquo;s Hotel.&nbsp;
+To each donkey there was a donkey-boy, and to each gentleman
+there was a dragoman, so that a goodly cort&eacute;ge was
+assembled, and a goodly noise was made.&nbsp; It may here be
+remarked, perhaps with some little pride, that not half the noise
+is given in Egypt to persons speaking any other language that is
+bestowed on those whose vocabulary is English.</p>
+<p>This lasted for half an hour.&nbsp; Had the party been French
+the donkeys would have arrived only fifteen minutes before the
+appointed time.&nbsp; And then out came Damer p&egrave;re and
+Damer m&egrave;re, Damer fille, and Damer fils.&nbsp; Damer
+m&egrave;re was leaning on her husband, as was her wont.&nbsp;
+She was not an unprotected female, and had no desire to make any
+attempts in that line.&nbsp; Damer fille was attended sedulously
+by Mr. Ingram, for whose demolishment, however, Mr. Damer still
+brought up, in a loud voice, the fag ends of certain political
+arguments which he would fain have poured direct into the ears of
+his opponent, had not his wife been so persistent in claiming her
+privileges.&nbsp; M. Delabordeau should have followed with Miss
+Dawkins, but his French politeness, or else his fear of the
+unprotected female, taught him to walk on the other side of the
+mistress of the party.</p>
+<p>Miss Dawkins left the house with an eager young Damer yelling
+on each side of her; but nevertheless, though thus neglected by
+the gentlemen of the party, she was all smiles and prettiness,
+and looked so sweetly on Mr. Ingram when that gentleman stayed a
+moment to help her on to her donkey, that his heart almost
+misgave him for leaving her as soon as she was in her seat.</p>
+<p>And then they were off.&nbsp; In going from the hotel to the
+Pyramids our party had not to pass through any of the queer old
+narrow streets of the true Cairo&mdash;Cairo the Oriental.&nbsp;
+They all lay behind them as they went down by the back of the
+hotel, by the barracks of the Pasha and the College of the
+Dervishes, to the village of old Cairo and the banks of the
+Nile.</p>
+<p>Here they were kept half an hour while their dragomans made a
+bargain with the ferryman, a stately reis, or captain of a boat,
+who declared with much dignity that he could not carry them over
+for a sum less than six times the amount to which he was justly
+entitled; while the dragomans, with great energy on behalf of
+their masters, offered him only five times that sum.</p>
+<p>As far as the reis was concerned, the contest might soon have
+been at an end, for the man was not without a conscience; and
+would have been content with five times and a half; but then the
+three dragomans quarrelled among themselves as to which should
+have the paying of the money, and the affair became very
+tedious.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What horrid, odious men!&rdquo; said Miss Dawkins,
+appealing to Mr. Damer.&nbsp; &ldquo;Do you think they will let
+us go over at all?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I suppose they will; people do get over
+generally, I believe.&nbsp; Abdallah!&nbsp; Abdallah! why
+don&rsquo;t you pay the man?&nbsp; That fellow is always striving
+to save half a piastre for me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish he wasn&rsquo;t quite so particular,&rdquo; said
+Mrs. Damer, who was already becoming rather tired; &ldquo;but
+I&rsquo;m sure he&rsquo;s a very honest man in trying to protect
+us from being robbed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That he is,&rdquo; said Miss Dawkins.&nbsp; &ldquo;What
+a delightful trait of national character it is to see these men
+so faithful to their employers.&rdquo;&nbsp; And then at last
+they got over the ferry, Mr. Ingram having descended among the
+combatants, and settled the matter in dispute by threats and
+shouts, and an uplifted stick.</p>
+<p>They crossed the broad Nile exactly at the spot where the
+nilometer, or river guage, measures from day to day, and from
+year to year, the increasing or decreasing treasures of the
+stream, and landed at a village where thousands of eggs are made
+into chickens by the process of artificial incubation.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Damer thought that it was very hard upon the maternal
+hens&mdash;the hens which should have been maternal&mdash;that
+they should be thus robbed of the delights of motherhood.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So unnatural, you know,&rdquo; said Miss Dawkins;
+&ldquo;so opposed to the fostering principles of creation.&nbsp;
+Don&rsquo;t you think so, Mr. Ingram?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Ingram said he didn&rsquo;t know.&nbsp; He was again
+seating Miss Damer on her donkey, and it must be presumed that he
+performed this feat clumsily; for Fanny Damer could jump on and
+off the animal with hardly a finger to help her, when her brother
+or her father was her escort; but now, under the hands of Mr.
+Ingram, this work of mounting was one which required considerable
+time and care.&nbsp; All which Miss Dawkins observed with
+precision.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all very well talking,&rdquo; said Mr.
+Damer, bringing up his donkey nearly alongside that of Mr.
+Ingram, and ignoring his daughter&rsquo;s presence, just as he
+would have done that of his dog; &ldquo;but you must admit that
+political power is more equally distributed in England than it is
+in America.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps it is,&rdquo; said Mr. Ingram; &ldquo;equally
+distributed among, we will say, three dozen families,&rdquo; and
+he made a feint as though to hold in his impetuous donkey, using
+the spur, however, at the same time on the side that was unseen
+by Mr. Damer.&nbsp; As he did so, Fanny&rsquo;s donkey became
+equally impetuous, and the two cantered on in advance of the
+whole party.&nbsp; It was quite in vain that Mr. Damer, at the
+top of his voice, shouted out something about &ldquo;three dozen
+corruptible demagogues.&rdquo;&nbsp; Mr. Ingram found it quite
+impossible to restrain his donkey so as to listen to the
+sarcasm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do believe papa would talk politics,&rdquo; said
+Fanny, &ldquo;if he were at the top of Mont Blanc, or under the
+Falls of Niagara.&nbsp; I do hate politics, Mr.
+Ingram.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am sorry for that, very,&rdquo; said Mr. Ingram,
+almost sadly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sorry, why?&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t want me to talk
+politics, do you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In America we are all politicians, more or less; and,
+therefore, I suppose you will hate us all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I rather think I should,&rdquo; said Fanny;
+&ldquo;you would be such bores.&rdquo;&nbsp; But there was
+something in her eye, as she spoke, which atoned for the
+harshness of her words.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A very nice young man is Mr. Ingram; don&rsquo;t you
+think so?&rdquo; said Miss Dawkins to Mrs. Damer.&nbsp; Mrs.
+Damer was going along upon her donkey, not altogether
+comfortably.&nbsp; She much wished to have her lord and
+legitimate protector by her side, but he had left her to the care
+of a dragoman whose English was not intelligible to her, and she
+was rather cross.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Indeed, Miss Dawkins, I don&rsquo;t know who are nice
+and who are not.&nbsp; This nasty donkey stumbles at ever
+step.&nbsp; There!&nbsp; I know I shall be down
+directly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You need not be at all afraid of that; they are
+perfectly safe, I believe, always,&rdquo; said Miss Dawkins,
+rising in her stirrup, and handling her reins quite
+triumphantly.&nbsp; &ldquo;A very little practice will make you
+quite at home.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you mean by a very little
+practice.&nbsp; I have been here six weeks.&nbsp; Why did you put
+me on such a bad donkey as this?&rdquo; and she turned to
+Abdallah, the dragoman.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Him berry good donkey, my lady; berry good,&mdash;best
+of all.&nbsp; Call him Jack in Cairo.&nbsp; Him go to Pyramid and
+back, and mind noting.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What does he say, Miss Dawkins?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He says that that donkey is one called Jack.&nbsp; If
+so I&rsquo;ve had him myself many times, and Jack is a very good
+donkey.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish you had him now with all my heart,&rdquo; said
+Mrs. Damer.&nbsp; Upon which Miss Dawkins offered to change; but
+those perils of mounting and dismounting were to Mrs. Damer a
+great deal too severe to admit of this.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Seven miles of canal to be carried out into the sea, at
+a minimum depth of twenty-three feet, and the stone to be fetched
+from Heaven knows where!&nbsp; All the money in France
+wouldn&rsquo;t do it.&rdquo;&nbsp; This was addressed by Mr.
+Damer to M. Delabordeau, whom he had caught after the abrupt
+flight of Mr. Ingram.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Den we will borrow a leetle from England,&rdquo; said
+M. Delabordeau.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Precious little, I can tell you.&nbsp; Such stock would
+not hold its price in our markets for twenty-four hours.&nbsp; If
+it were made, the freights would be too heavy to allow of
+merchandise passing through.&nbsp; The heavy goods would all go
+round; and as for passengers and mails, you don&rsquo;t expect to
+get them, I suppose, while there is a railroad ready made to
+their hand?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ye vill carry all your ships through vidout any
+transportation.&nbsp; Think of that, my friend.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pshaw!&nbsp; You are worse than Ingram.&nbsp; Of all
+the plans I ever heard of it is the most monstrous, the most
+impracticable, the most&mdash;&rdquo;&nbsp; But here he was
+interrupted by the entreaties of his wife, who had, in absolute
+deed and fact, slipped from her donkey, and was now calling
+lustily for her husband&rsquo;s aid.&nbsp; Whereupon Miss Dawkins
+allied herself to the Frenchman, and listened with an air of
+strong conviction to those arguments which were so weak in the
+ears of Mr. Damer.&nbsp; M. Delabordeau was about to ride across
+the Great Desert to Jerusalem, and it might perhaps be quite as
+well to do that with him, as to go up the Nile as far as the
+second cataract with the Damers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And so, M. Delabordeau, you intend really to start for
+Mount Sinai?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, mees; ve intend to make one start on Monday
+week.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And so on to Jerusalem.&nbsp; You are quite
+right.&nbsp; It would be a thousand pities to be in these
+countries, and to return without going over such ground as
+that.&nbsp; I shall certainly go to Jerusalem myself by that
+route.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Vot, mees! you?&nbsp; Would you not find it too much
+fatigante?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I care nothing for fatigue, if I like the party I am
+with,&mdash;nothing at all, literally.&nbsp; You will hardly
+understand me, perhaps, M. Delabordeau; but I do not see any
+reason why I, as a young woman, should not make any journey that
+is practicable for a young man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! dat is great resolution for you, mees.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I mean as far as fatigue is concerned.&nbsp; You are a
+Frenchman, and belong to the nation that is at the head of all
+human civilisation&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>M. Delabordeau took off his hat and bowed low, to the peak of
+his donkey saddle.&nbsp; He dearly loved to hear his country
+praised, as Miss Dawkins was aware.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I am sure you must agree with me,&rdquo; continued
+Miss Dawkins, &ldquo;that the time is gone by for women to
+consider themselves helpless animals, or to be so considered by
+others.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mees Dawkins vould never be considered, not in any
+times at all, to be one helpless animal,&rdquo; said M.
+Delabordeau civilly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do not, at any rate, intend to be so regarded,&rdquo;
+said she.&nbsp; &ldquo;It suits me to travel alone; not that I am
+averse to society; quite the contrary; if I meet pleasant people
+I am always ready to join them.&nbsp; But it suits me to travel
+without any permanent party, and I do not see why false shame
+should prevent my seeing the world as thoroughly as though I
+belonged to the other sex.&nbsp; Why should it, M.
+Delabordeau?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>M. Delabordeau declared that he did not see any reason why it
+should.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am passionately anxious to stand upon Mount
+Sinai,&rdquo; continued Miss Dawkins; &ldquo;to press with my
+feet the earliest spot in sacred history, of the identity of
+which we are certain; to feel within me the awe-inspiring thrill
+of that thrice sacred hour!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Frenchman looked as though he did not quite understand
+her, but he said that it would be magnifique.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You have already made up your party I suppose, M.
+Delabordeau?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>M. Delabordeau gave the names of two Frenchmen and one
+Englishman who were going with him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Upon my word it is a great temptation to join
+you,&rdquo; said Miss Dawkins, &ldquo;only for that horrid
+Englishman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Vat, Mr. Stanley?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t mean any disrespect to Mr.
+Stanley.&nbsp; The horridness I speak of does not attach to him
+personally, but to his stiff, respectable, ungainly,
+well-behaved, irrational, and uncivilised country.&nbsp; You see
+I am not very patriotic.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not quite so much as my friend, Mr. Damer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ha! ha! ha! an excellent creature, isn&rsquo;t
+he?&nbsp; And so they all are, dear creatures.&nbsp; But then
+they are so backward.&nbsp; They are most anxious that I should
+join them up the Nile, but&mdash;,&rdquo; and then Miss Dawkins
+shrugged her shoulders gracefully, and, as she flattered herself,
+like a Frenchwoman.&nbsp; After that they rode on in silence for
+a few moments.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I must see Mount Sinai,&rdquo; said Miss Dawkins,
+and then sighed deeply.&nbsp; M. Delabordeau, notwithstanding
+that his country does stand at the head of all human
+civilisation, was not courteous enough to declare that if Miss
+Dawkins would join his party across the desert, nothing would be
+wanting to make his beatitude in this world perfect.</p>
+<p>Their road from the village of the chicken-hatching ovens lay
+up along the left bank of the Nile, through an immense grove of
+lofty palm-trees, looking out from among which our visitors could
+ever and anon see the heads of the two great Pyramids;&mdash;that
+is, such of them could see it as felt any solicitude in the
+matter.</p>
+<p>It is astonishing how such things lose their great charm as
+men find themselves in their close neighbourhood.&nbsp; To one
+living in New York or London, how ecstatic is the interest
+inspired by these huge structures.&nbsp; One feels that no price
+would be too high to pay for seeing them as long as time and
+distance, and the world&rsquo;s inexorable task-work, forbid such
+a visit.&nbsp; How intense would be the delight of climbing over
+the wondrous handiwork of those wondrous architects so long since
+dead; how thrilling the awe with which one would penetrate down
+into their interior caves&mdash;those caves in which lay buried
+the bones of ancient kings, whose very names seem to have come to
+us almost from another world!</p>
+<p>But all these feelings become strangely dim, their acute edges
+wonderfully worn, as the subjects which inspired them are brought
+near to us.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ah! so those are the Pyramids, are
+they?&rdquo; says the traveller, when the first glimpse of them
+is shown to him from the window of a railway carriage.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Dear me; they don&rsquo;t look so very high, do
+they?&nbsp; For Heaven&rsquo;s sake put the blind down, or we
+shall be destroyed by the dust.&rdquo;&nbsp; And then the ecstasy
+and keen delight of the Pyramids has vanished for ever.</p>
+<p>Our friends, therefore, who for weeks past had seen from a
+distance, though they had not yet visited them, did not seem to
+have any strong feeling on the subject as they trotted through
+the grove of palm-trees.&nbsp; Mr. Damer had not yet escaped from
+his wife, who was still fretful from the result of her little
+accident.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was all the chattering of that Miss Dawkins,&rdquo;
+said Mrs. Damer.&nbsp; &ldquo;She would not let me attend to what
+I was doing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Miss Dawkins is an ass,&rdquo; said her husband.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is a pity she has no one to look after her,&rdquo;
+said Mrs. Damer.&nbsp; M. Delabordeau was still listening to Miss
+Dawkins&rsquo;s raptures about Mount Sinai.&nbsp; &ldquo;I wonder
+whether she has got any money,&rdquo; said M. Delabordeau to
+himself.&nbsp; &ldquo;It can&rsquo;t be much,&rdquo; he went on
+thinking, &ldquo;or she would not be left in this way by
+herself.&rdquo;&nbsp; And the result of his thoughts was that
+Miss Dawkins, if undertaken, might probably become more plague
+than profit.&nbsp; As to Miss Dawkins herself, though she was
+ecstatic about Mount Sinai&mdash;which was not present&mdash;she
+seemed to have forgotten the poor Pyramids, which were then
+before her nose.</p>
+<p>The two lads were riding races along the dusty path, much to
+the disgust of their donkey-boys.&nbsp; Their time for enjoyment
+was to come.&nbsp; There were hampers to be opened; and then the
+absolute climbing of the Pyramids would actually be a delight to
+them.</p>
+<p>As for Miss Damer and Mr. Ingram, it was clear that they had
+forgotten palm-trees, Pyramids, the Nile, and all Egypt.&nbsp;
+They had escaped to a much fairer paradise.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Could I bear to live among Republicans?&rdquo; said
+Fanny, repeating the last words of her American lover, and
+looking down from her donkey to the ground as she did so.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I hardly know what Republicans are, Mr. Ingram.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let me teach you,&rdquo; said he.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You do talk such nonsense.&nbsp; I declare there is
+that Miss Dawkins looking at us as though she had twenty
+eyes.&nbsp; Could you not teach her, Mr. Ingram?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>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&rsquo;s head all in a group together.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fanny,&rdquo; said Bob Damer, riding up to her,
+&ldquo;mamma wants you; so toddle back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mamma wants me!&nbsp; What can she want me for
+now?&rdquo; said Fanny, with a look of anything but filial duty
+in her face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To protect her from Miss Dawkins, I think.&nbsp; She
+wants you to ride at her side, so that Dawkins mayn&rsquo;t get
+at her.&nbsp; Now, Mr. Ingram, I&rsquo;ll bet you half-a-crown
+I&rsquo;m at the top of the big Pyramid before you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Poor Fanny!&nbsp; She obeyed, however; doubtless feeling that
+it would not do as yet to show too plainly that she preferred Mr.
+Ingram to her mother.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot think, Fanny, how you get on so quick,&rdquo;
+said Mrs. Damer.&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m always last; but then my
+donkey is such a very nasty one.&nbsp; Look there, now;
+he&rsquo;s always trying to get me off.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We shall soon be at the Pyramids now, mamma.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How on earth I am ever to get back again I cannot
+think.&nbsp; I am so tired now that I can hardly sit.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be better, mamma, when you get your
+luncheon and a glass of wine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How on earth we are to eat and drink with those nasty
+Arab people around us, I can&rsquo;t conceive.&nbsp; They tell me
+we shall be eaten up by them.&nbsp; But, Fanny, what has Mr.
+Ingram been saying to you all the day?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What has he been saying, mamma?&nbsp; Oh!&nbsp; I
+don&rsquo;t know;&mdash;a hundred things, I dare say.&nbsp; But
+he has not been talking to me all the time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think he has, Fanny, nearly, since we crossed the
+river.&nbsp; Oh, dear! oh, dear! this animal does hurt me
+so!&nbsp; Every time he moves he flings his head about, and that
+gives me such a bump.&rdquo;&nbsp; And then Fanny commiserated
+her mother&rsquo;s sufferings, and in her commiseration contrived
+to elude any further questionings as to Mr. Ingram&rsquo;s
+conversation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Majestic piles, are they not?&rdquo; said Miss Dawkins,
+who, having changed her companion, allowed her mind to revert
+from Mount Sinai to the Pyramids.&nbsp; They were now riding
+through cultivated ground, with the vast extent of the sands of
+Libya before them.&nbsp; The two Pyramids were standing on the
+margin of the sand, with the head of the recumbent sphynx plainly
+visible between them.&nbsp; But no idea can be formed of the size
+of this immense figure till it is visited much more
+closely.&nbsp; The body is covered with sand, and the head and
+neck alone stand above the surface of the ground.&nbsp; They were
+still two miles distant, and the sphynx as yet was but an obscure
+mount between the two vast Pyramids.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Immense piles!&rdquo; said Miss Dawkins, repeating her
+own words.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, they are large,&rdquo; said Mr. Ingram, who did
+not choose to indulge in enthusiasm in the presence of Miss
+Dawkins.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Enormous!&nbsp; What a grand idea!&mdash;eh, Mr.
+Ingram?&nbsp; The human race does not create such things as those
+nowadays!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, indeed,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;but perhaps we
+create better things.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Better!&nbsp; You do not mean to say, Mr. Ingram, that
+you are an utilitarian.&nbsp; I do, in truth, hope better things
+of you than that.&nbsp; Yes! steam mills are better, no doubt,
+and mechanics&rsquo; institutes and penny newspapers.&nbsp; But
+is nothing to be valued but what is useful?&rdquo;&nbsp; And Miss
+Dawkins, in the height of her enthusiasm, switched her donkey
+severely over the shoulder.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I might, perhaps, have said also that we create more
+beautiful things,&rdquo; said Mr. Ingram.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But we cannot create older things.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, certainly; we cannot do that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nor can we imbue what we do create with the grand
+associations which environ those piles with so intense an
+interest.&nbsp; Think of the mighty dead, Mr. Ingram, and of
+their great homes when living.&nbsp; Think of the hands which it
+took to raise those huge blocks&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And of the lives which it cost.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Doubtless.&nbsp; The tyranny and invincible power of
+the royal architects add to the grandeur of the idea.&nbsp; One
+would not wish to have back the kings of Egypt.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, no; they would be neither useful nor
+beautiful.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps not; and I do not wish to be picturesque at the
+expense of my fellow-creatures.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I doubt, even, whether they would be
+picturesque.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You know what I mean, Mr. Ingram.&nbsp; But the
+associations of such names, and the presence of the stupendous
+works with which they are connected, fill the soul with
+awe.&nbsp; Such, at least, is the effect with mine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I fear that my tendencies, Miss Dawkins, are more
+realistic than your own.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You belong to a young country, Mr. Ingram, and are
+naturally prone to think of material life.&nbsp; The necessity of
+living looms large before you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Very large, indeed, Miss Dawkins.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whereas with us, with some of us at least, the material
+aspect has given place to one in which poetry and enthusiasm
+prevail.&nbsp; To such among us the associations of past times
+are very dear.&nbsp; Cheops, to me, is more than Napoleon
+Bonaparte.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is more than most of your countrymen can say, at
+any rate, just at present.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am a woman,&rdquo; continued Miss Dawkins.</p>
+<p>Mr. Ingram took off his hat in acknowledgment both of the
+announcement and of the fact.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And to us it is not given&mdash;not given as
+yet&mdash;to share in the great deeds of the present.&nbsp; The
+envy of your sex has driven us from the paths which lead to
+honour.&nbsp; But the deeds of the past are as much ours as
+yours.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, quite as much.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis to your country that we look for
+enfranchisement from this thraldom.&nbsp; Yes, Mr. Ingram, the
+women of America have that strength of mind which has been
+wanting to those of Europe.&nbsp; In the United States woman will
+at last learn to exercise her proper mission.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Ingram expressed a sincere wish that such might be the
+case; and then wondering at the ingenuity with which Miss Dawkins
+had travelled round from Cheops and his Pyramid to the rights of
+women in America, he contrived to fall back, under the pretence
+of asking after the ailments of Mrs. Damer.</p>
+<p>And now at last they were on the sand, in the absolute desert,
+making their way up to the very foot of the most northern of the
+two Pyramids.&nbsp; They were by this time surrounded by a crowd
+of Arab guides, or Arabs professing to be guides, who had already
+ascertained that Mr. Damer was the chief of the party, and were
+accordingly driving him almost to madness by the offers of their
+services, and their assurance that he could not possibly see the
+outside or the inside of either structure, or even remain alive
+upon the ground, unless he at once accepted their offers made at
+their own prices.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Get away, will you?&rdquo; said he.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t want any of you, and I won&rsquo;t have you!&nbsp; If
+you take hold of me I&rsquo;ll shoot you!&rdquo;&nbsp; This was
+said to one specially energetic Arab, who, in his efforts to
+secure his prey, had caught hold of Mr. Damer by the leg.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, yes, I say!&nbsp; Englishmen always take
+me;&mdash;me&mdash;me, and then no break him leg.&nbsp;
+Yes&mdash;yes&mdash;yes;&mdash;I go.&nbsp; Master, say yes.&nbsp;
+Only one leetle ten shillings!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Abdallah!&rdquo; shouted Mr. Damer, &ldquo;why
+don&rsquo;t you take this man away?&nbsp; Why don&rsquo;t you
+make him understand that if all the Pyramids depended on it, I
+would not give him sixpence!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And then Abdallah, thus invoked, came up, and explained to the
+man in Arabic that he would gain his object more surely if he
+would behave himself a little more quietly; a hint which the man
+took for one minute, and for one minute only.</p>
+<p>And then poor Mrs. Damer replied to an application for
+backsheish by the gift of a sixpence.&nbsp; Unfortunate
+woman!&nbsp; The word backsheish means, I believe, a gift; but it
+has come in Egypt to signify money, and is eternally dinned into
+the ears of strangers by Arab suppliants.&nbsp; Mrs. Damer ought
+to have known better, as, during the last six weeks she had never
+shown her face out of Shepheard&rsquo;s Hotel without being
+pestered for backsheish; but she was tired and weak, and
+foolishly thought to rid herself of the man who was annoying
+her.</p>
+<p>No sooner had the coin dropped from her hand into that of the
+Arab, than she was surrounded by a cluster of beggars, who loudly
+made their petitions as though they would, each of them,
+individually be injured if treated with less liberality than that
+first comer.&nbsp; They took hold of her donkey, her bridle, her
+saddle, her legs, and at last her arms and hands, screaming for
+backsheish in voices that were neither sweet nor mild.</p>
+<p>In her dismay she did give away sundry small coins&mdash;all,
+probably, that she had about her; but this only made the matter
+worse.&nbsp; Money was going, and each man, by sufficient energy,
+might hope to get some of it.&nbsp; They were very energetic, and
+so frightened the poor lady that she would certainly have fallen,
+had she not been kept on her seat by the pressure around her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, dear! oh, dear! get away,&rdquo; she cried.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t got any more; indeed I
+haven&rsquo;t.&nbsp; Go away, I tell you!&nbsp; Mr. Damer! oh,
+Mr. Damer!&rdquo; and then, in the excess of her agony, she
+uttered one loud, long, and continuous shriek.</p>
+<p>Up came Mr. Damer; up came Abdallah; up came M. Delabordeau;
+up came Mr. Ingram, and at last she was rescued.&nbsp; &ldquo;You
+shouldn&rsquo;t go away and leave me to the mercy of these nasty
+people.&nbsp; As to that Abdallah, he is of no use to
+anybody.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why you bodder de good lady, you dem blackguard?&rdquo;
+said Abdallah, raising his stick, as though he were going to lay
+them all low with a blow.&nbsp; &ldquo;Now you get noting, you
+tief!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Arabs for a moment retired to a little distance, like
+flies driven from a sugar-bowl; but it was easy to see that, like
+the flies, they would return at the first vacant moment.</p>
+<p>And now they had reached the very foot of the Pyramids and
+proceeded to dismount from their donkeys.&nbsp; Their intention
+was first to ascend to the top, then to come down to their
+banquet, and after that to penetrate into the interior.&nbsp; And
+all this would seem to be easy of performance.&nbsp; The Pyramid
+is undoubtedly high, but it is so constructed as to admit of
+climbing without difficulty.&nbsp; A lady mounting it would
+undoubtedly need some assistance, but any man possessed of
+moderate activity would require no aid at all.</p>
+<p>But our friends were at once imbued with the tremendous nature
+of the task before them.&nbsp; A sheikh of the Arabs came forth,
+who communicated with them through Abdallah.&nbsp; The work could
+be done, no doubt, he said; but a great many men would be wanted
+to assist.&nbsp; Each lady must have four Arabs, and each
+gentlemen three; and then, seeing that the work would be
+peculiarly severe on this special day, each of these numerous
+Arabs must be remunerated by some very large number of
+piastres.</p>
+<p>Mr. Damer, who was by no means a close man in his money
+dealings, opened his eyes with surprise, and mildly expostulated;
+M. Delabordeau, who was rather a close man in his reckonings,
+immediately buttoned up his breeches pocket and declared that he
+should decline to mount the Pyramid at all at that price; and
+then Mr. Ingram descended to the combat.</p>
+<p>The protestations of the men were fearful.&nbsp; They
+declared, with loud voices, eager actions, and manifold English
+oaths, that an attempt was being made to rob them.&nbsp; They had
+a right to demand the sums which they were charging, and it was a
+shame that English gentlemen should come and take the bread out
+of their mouths.&nbsp; And so they screeched, gesticulated, and
+swore, and frightened poor Mrs. Damer almost into fits.</p>
+<p>But at last it was settled and away they started, the sheikh
+declaring that the bargain had been made at so low a rate as to
+leave him not one piastre for himself.&nbsp; Each man had an Arab
+on each side of him, and Miss Dawkins and Miss Damer had each, in
+addition, one behind.&nbsp; Mrs. Damer was so frightened as
+altogether to have lost all ambition to ascend.&nbsp; She sat
+below on a fragment of stone, with the three dragomans standing
+around her as guards; but even with the three dragomans the
+attacks on her were so frequent, and as she declared afterwards
+she was so bewildered, that she never had time to remember that
+she had come there from England to see the Pyramids, and that she
+was now immediately under them.</p>
+<p>The boys, utterly ignoring their guides, scrambled up quicker
+than the Arabs could follow them.&nbsp; Mr. Damer started off at
+a pace which soon brought him to the end of his tether, and from
+that point was dragged up by the sheer strength of his
+assistants; thereby accomplishing the wishes of the men, who
+induce their victims to start as rapidly as possible, in order
+that they may soon find themselves helpless from want of
+wind.&nbsp; Mr. Ingram endeavoured to attach himself to Fanny,
+and she would have been nothing loth to have him at her right
+hand instead of the hideous brown, shrieking, one-eyed Arab who
+took hold of her.&nbsp; But it was soon found that any such
+arrangement was impossible.&nbsp; Each guide felt that if he lost
+his own peculiar hold he would lose his prey, and held on,
+therefore, with invincible tenacity.&nbsp; Miss Dawkins looked,
+too, as though she had thought to be attended to by some
+Christian cavalier, but no Christian cavalier was
+forthcoming.&nbsp; M. Delabordeau was the wisest, for he took the
+matter quietly, did as he was bid, and allowed the guides nearly
+to carry him to the top of the edifice.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ha! so this is the top of the Pyramid, is it?&rdquo;
+said Mr. Damer, bringing out his words one by one, being terribly
+out of breath.&nbsp; &ldquo;Very wonderful, very wonderful,
+indeed!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is wonderful,&rdquo; said Miss Dawkins, whose breath
+had not failed her in the least, &ldquo;very wonderful,
+indeed!&nbsp; Only think, Mr. Damer, you might travel on for days
+and days, till days became months, through those interminable
+sands, and yet you would never come to the end of them.&nbsp; Is
+it not quite stupendous?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, yes, quite,&mdash;puff, puff&rdquo;&mdash;said Mr.
+Damer striving to regain his breath.</p>
+<p>Mr. Damer was now at her disposal; weak and worn with toil and
+travel, out of breath, and with half his manhood gone; if ever
+she might prevail over him so as to procure from his mouth an
+assent to that Nile proposition, it would be now.&nbsp; And after
+all, that Nile proposition was the best one now before her.&nbsp;
+She did not quite like the idea of starting off across the Great
+Desert without any lady, and was not sure that she was prepared
+to be fallen in love with by M. Delabordeau, even if there should
+ultimately be any readiness on the part of that gentleman to
+perform the r&ocirc;le of lover.&nbsp; With Mr. Ingram the matter
+was different, nor was she so diffident of her own charms as to
+think it altogether impossible that she might succeed, in the
+teeth of that little chit, Fanny Damer.&nbsp; That Mr. Ingram
+would join the party up the Nile she had very little doubt; and
+then there would be one place left for her.&nbsp; She would thus,
+at any rate, become commingled with a most respectable family,
+who might be of material service to her.</p>
+<p>Thus actuated she commenced an earnest attack upon Mr.
+Damer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Stupendous!&rdquo; she said again, for she was fond of
+repeating favourite words.&nbsp; &ldquo;What a wondrous race must
+have been those Egyptian kings of old!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I dare say they were,&rdquo; said Mr. Damer, wiping his
+brow as he sat upon a large loose stone, a fragment lying on the
+flat top of the Pyramid, one of those stones with which the
+complete apex was once made, or was once about to be made.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A magnificent race! so gigantic in their
+conceptions!&nbsp; Their ideas altogether overwhelm us poor,
+insignificant, latter-day mortals.&nbsp; They built these vast
+Pyramids; but for us, it is task enough to climb to their
+top.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Quite enough,&rdquo; ejaculated Mr. Damer.</p>
+<p>But Mr. Damer would not always remain weak and out of breath,
+and it was absolutely necessary for Miss Dawkins to hurry away
+from Cheops and his tomb, to Thebes and Karnac.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;After seeing this it is impossible for any one with a
+spark of imagination to leave Egypt without going farther
+a-field.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Damer merely wiped his brow and grunted.&nbsp; This Miss
+Dawkins took as a signal of weakness, and went on with her task
+perseveringly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For myself, I have resolved to go up, at any rate, as
+far as Asouan and the first cataract.&nbsp; I had thought of
+acceding to the wishes of a party who are going across the Great
+Desert by Mount Sinai to Jerusalem; but the kindness of yourself
+and Mrs. Damer is so great, and the prospect of joining in your
+boat is so pleasurable, that I have made up my mind to accept
+your very kind offer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This, it will be acknowledged, was bold on the part of Miss
+Dawkins; but what will not audacity effect?&nbsp; To use the
+slang of modern language, cheek carries everything
+nowadays.&nbsp; And whatever may have been Miss Dawkins&rsquo;s
+deficiencies, in this virtue she was not deficient.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have made up my mind to accept your very kind
+offer,&rdquo; she said, shining on Mr. Damer with her blandest
+smile.</p>
+<p>What was a stout, breathless, perspiring, middle-aged
+gentleman to do under such circumstances?&nbsp; Mr. Damer was a
+man who, in most matters, had his own way.&nbsp; That his wife
+should have given such an invitation without consulting him, was,
+he knew, quite impossible.&nbsp; She would as soon have thought
+of asking all those Arab guides to accompany them.&nbsp; Nor was
+it to be thought of that he should allow himself to be kidnapped
+into such an arrangement by the impudence of any Miss
+Dawkins.&nbsp; But there was, he felt, a difficulty in answering
+such a proposition from a young lady with a direct negative,
+especially while he was so scant of breath.&nbsp; So he wiped his
+brow again, and looked at her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I can only agree to this on one
+understanding,&rdquo; continued Miss Dawkins, &ldquo;and that is,
+that I am allowed to defray my own full share of the expense of
+the journey.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Upon hearing this Mr. Damer thought that he saw his way out of
+the wood.&nbsp; &ldquo;Wherever I go, Miss Dawkins, I am always
+the paymaster myself,&rdquo; and this he contrived to say with
+some sternness, palpitating though he still was; and the
+sternness which was deficient in his voice he endeavoured to put
+into his countenance.</p>
+<p>But he did not know Miss Dawkins.&nbsp; &ldquo;Oh, Mr.
+Damer,&rdquo; she said, and as she spoke her smile became almost
+blander than it was before; &ldquo;oh, Mr. Damer, I could not
+think of suffering you to be so liberal; I could not,
+indeed.&nbsp; But I shall be quite content that you should pay
+everything, and let me settle with you in one sum
+afterwards.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Damer&rsquo;s breath was now rather more under his own
+command.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am afraid, Miss Dawkins,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;that Mrs. Damer&rsquo;s weak state of health will not
+admit of such an arrangement.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What, about the paying?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not only as to that, but we are a family party, Miss
+Dawkins; and great as would be the benefit of your society to all
+of us, in Mrs. Damer&rsquo;s present state of health, I am
+afraid&mdash;in short, you would not find it agreeable.&mdash;And
+therefore&mdash;&rdquo; this he added, seeing that she was still
+about to persevere&mdash;&ldquo;I fear that we must forego the
+advantage you offer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And then, looking into his face, Miss Dawkins did perceive
+that even her audacity would not prevail.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, very well,&rdquo; she said, and moving from the
+stone on which she had been sitting, she walked off, carrying her
+head very high, to a corner of the Pyramid from which she could
+look forth alone towards the sands of Libya.</p>
+<p>In the mean time another little overture was being made on the
+top of the same Pyramid,&mdash;an overture which was not received
+quite in the same spirit.&nbsp; While Mr. Damer was recovering
+his breath for the sake of answering Miss Dawkins, Miss Damer had
+walked to the further corner of the square platform on which they
+were placed, and there sat herself down with her face turned
+towards Cairo.&nbsp; Perhaps it was not singular that Mr. Ingram
+should have followed her.</p>
+<p>This would have been very well if a dozen Arabs had not also
+followed them.&nbsp; But as this was the case, Mr. Ingram had to
+play his game under some difficulty.&nbsp; He had no sooner
+seated himself beside her than they came and stood directly in
+front of the seat, shutting out the view, and by no means
+improving the fragrance of the air around them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And this, then, Miss Damer, will be our last excursion
+together,&rdquo; he said, in his tenderest, softest tone.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;De good Englishman will gib de poor Arab one little
+backsheish,&rdquo; said an Arab, putting out his hand and shaking
+Mr. Ingram&rsquo;s shoulder.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, yes, yes; him gib backsheish,&rdquo; said
+another.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Him berry good man,&rdquo; said a third, putting up his
+filthy hand, and touching Mr. Ingram&rsquo;s face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And young lady berry good, too; she give backsheish to
+poor Arab.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said a fourth, preparing to take a similar
+liberty with Miss Damer.</p>
+<p>This was too much for Mr. Ingram.&nbsp; He had already used
+very positive language in his endeavour to assure his tormentors
+that they would not get a piastre from him.&nbsp; But this only
+changed their soft persuasions into threats.&nbsp; Upon hearing
+which, and upon seeing what the man attempted to do in his
+endeavour to get money from Miss Damer, he raised his stick, and
+struck first one and then the other as violently as he could upon
+their heads.</p>
+<p>Any ordinary civilised men would have been stunned by such
+blows, for they fell on the bare foreheads of the Arabs; but the
+objects of the American&rsquo;s wrath merely skulked away; and
+the others, convinced by the only arguments which they
+understood, followed in pursuit of victims who might be less
+pugnacious.</p>
+<p>It is hard for a man to be at once tender and
+pugnacious&mdash;to be sentimental, while he is putting forth his
+physical strength with all the violence in his power.&nbsp; It is
+difficult, also, for him to be gentle instantly after having been
+in a rage.&nbsp; So he changed his tactics at the moment, and
+came to the point at once in a manner befitting his present state
+of mind.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Those vile wretches have put me in such a heat,&rdquo;
+he said, &ldquo;that I hardly know what I am saying.&nbsp; But
+the fact is this, Miss Damer, I cannot leave Cairo without
+knowing&mdash;.&nbsp; You understand what I mean, Miss
+Damer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Indeed I do not, Mr. Ingram; except that I am afraid
+you mean nonsense.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, you do; you know that I love you.&nbsp; I am sure
+you must know it.&nbsp; At any rate you know it now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Ingram, you should not talk in such a
+way.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why should I not?&nbsp; But the truth is, Fanny, I can
+talk in no other way.&nbsp; I do love you dearly.&nbsp; Can you
+love me well enough to go and be my wife in a country far away
+from your own?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Before she left the top of the Pyramid Fanny Damer had said
+that she would try.</p>
+<p>Mr. Ingram was now a proud and happy man, and seemed to think
+the steps of the Pyramid too small for his elastic energy.&nbsp;
+But Fanny feared that her troubles were to come.&nbsp; There was
+papa&mdash;that terrible bugbear on all such occasions.&nbsp;
+What would papa say?&nbsp; She was sure her papa would not allow
+her to marry and go so far away from her own family and
+country.&nbsp; For herself, she liked the Americans&mdash;always
+had liked them; so she said;&mdash;would desire nothing better
+than to live among them.&nbsp; But papa!&nbsp; And Fanny sighed
+as she felt that all the recognised miseries of a young lady in
+love were about to fall upon her.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, at her lover&rsquo;s instance, she promised, and
+declared, in twenty different loving phrases, that nothing on
+earth should ever make her false to her love or to her lover.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fanny, where are you?&nbsp; Why are you not ready to
+come down?&rdquo; shouted Mr. Damer, not in the best of
+tempers.&nbsp; He felt that he had almost been unkind to an
+unprotected female, and his heart misgave him.&nbsp; And yet it
+would have misgiven him more had he allowed himself to be
+entrapped by Miss Dawkins.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am quite ready, papa,&rdquo; said Fanny, running up
+to him&mdash;for it may be understood that there is quite room
+enough for a young lady to run on the top of the Pyramid.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am sure I don&rsquo;t know where you have been all
+the time,&rdquo; said Mr. Damer; &ldquo;and where are those two
+boys?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Fanny pointed to the top of the other Pyramid, and there they
+were, conspicuous with their red caps.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And M. Delabordeau?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! he has gone down, I think;&mdash;no, he is there
+with Miss Dawkins.&rdquo;&nbsp; And in truth Miss Dawkins was
+leaning on his arm most affectionately, as she stooped over and
+looked down upon the ruins below her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And where is that fellow, Ingram?&rdquo; said Mr.
+Damer, looking about him.&nbsp; &ldquo;He is always out of the
+way when he&rsquo;s wanted.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To this Fanny said nothing.&nbsp; Why should she?&nbsp; She
+was not Mr. Ingram&rsquo;s keeper.</p>
+<p>And then they all descended, each again with his proper number
+of Arabs to hurry and embarrass him; and they found Mr. Damer at
+the bottom, like a piece of sugar covered with flies.&nbsp; She
+was heard to declare afterwards that she would not go to the
+Pyramids again, not if they were to be given to her for herself,
+as ornaments for her garden.</p>
+<p>The picnic lunch among the big stones at the foot of the
+Pyramid was not a very gay affair.&nbsp; Miss Dawkins talked more
+than any one else, being determined to show that she bore her
+defeat gallantly.&nbsp; Her conversation, however, was chiefly
+addressed to M. Delabordeau, and he seemed to think more of his
+cold chicken and ham than he did of her wit and attention.</p>
+<p>Fanny hardly spoke a word.&nbsp; There was her father before
+her and she could not eat, much less talk, as she thought of all
+that she would have to go through.&nbsp; What would he say to the
+idea of having an American for a son-in-law?</p>
+<p>Nor was Mr. Ingram very lively.&nbsp; A young man when he has
+been just accepted, never is so.&nbsp; His happiness under the
+present circumstances was, no doubt, intense, but it was of a
+silent nature.</p>
+<p>And then the interior of the building had to be visited.&nbsp;
+To tell the truth none of the party would have cared to perform
+this feat had it not been for the honour of the thing.&nbsp; To
+have come from Paris, New York, or London, to the Pyramids, and
+then not to have visited the very tomb of Cheops, would have
+shown on the part of all of them an indifference to subjects of
+interest which would have been altogether fatal to their
+character as travellers.&nbsp; And so a party for the interior
+was made up.</p>
+<p>Miss Damer when she saw the aperture through which it was
+expected that she should descend, at once declared for staying
+with her mother.&nbsp; Miss Dawkins, however, was enthusiastic
+for the journey.&nbsp; &ldquo;Persons with so very little command
+over their nerves might really as well stay at home,&rdquo; she
+said to Mr. Ingram, who glowered at her dreadfully for expressing
+such an opinion about his Fanny.</p>
+<p>This entrance into the Pyramids is a terrible task, which
+should be undertaken by no lady.&nbsp; Those who perform it have
+to creep down, and then to be dragged up, through infinite dirt,
+foul smells, and bad air; and when they have done it, they see
+nothing.&nbsp; But they do earn the gratification of saying that
+they have been inside a Pyramid.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve done that once,&rdquo; said Mr. Damer,
+coming out, &ldquo;and I do not think that any one will catch me
+doing it again.&nbsp; I never was in such a filthy place in my
+life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Fanny! I am so glad you did not go; I am sure it is
+not fit for ladies,&rdquo; said poor Mrs. Damer, forgetful of her
+friend Miss Dawkins.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should have been ashamed of myself,&rdquo; said Miss
+Dawkins, bristling up, and throwing back her head as she stood,
+&ldquo;if I had allowed any consideration to have prevented my
+visiting such a spot.&nbsp; If it be not improper for men to go
+there, how can it be improper for women?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I did not say improper, my dear,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Damer, apologetically.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And as for the fatigue, what can a woman be worth who
+is afraid to encounter as much as I have now gone through for the
+sake of visiting the last resting-place of such a king as
+Cheops?&rdquo;&nbsp; And Miss Dawkins, as she pronounced the last
+words, looked round her with disdain upon poor Fanny Damer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I meant the dirt,&rdquo; said Mrs. Damer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dirt!&rdquo; ejaculated Miss Dawkins, and then walked
+away.&nbsp; Why should she now submit her high tone of feeling to
+the Damers, or why care longer for their good opinion?&nbsp;
+Therefore she scattered contempt around her as she ejaculated the
+last word, &ldquo;dirt.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And then the return home!&nbsp; &ldquo;I know I shall never
+get there,&rdquo; said Mrs. Damer, looking piteously up into her
+husband&rsquo;s face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nonsense, my dear; nonsense; you must get
+there.&rdquo;&nbsp; Mrs. Damer groaned, and acknowledged in her
+heart that she must,&mdash;either dead or alive.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And, Jefferson,&rdquo; said Fanny, whispering&mdash;for
+there had been a moment since their descent in which she had been
+instructed to call him by his Christian name&mdash;&ldquo;never
+mind talking to me going home.&nbsp; I will ride by mamma.&nbsp;
+Do you go with papa and put him in good humour; and it he says
+anything about the lords and the bishops, don&rsquo;t you
+contradict him, you know.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>What will not a man do for love?&nbsp; Mr. Ingram
+promised.</p>
+<p>And in this way they started; the two boys led the van; then
+came Mr. Damer and Mr. Ingram, unusually and unpatriotically
+acquiescent as to England&rsquo;s aristocratic propensities; then
+Miss Dawkins riding, alas! alone; after her, M. Delabordeau, also
+alone,&mdash;the ungallant Frenchman!&nbsp; And the rear was
+brought up by Mrs. Damer and her daughter, flanked on each side
+by a dragoman, with a third dragoman behind them.</p>
+<p>And in this order they went back to Cairo, riding their
+donkeys, and crossing the ferry solemnly, and, for the most part,
+silently.&nbsp; Mr. Ingram did talk, as he had an important
+object in view,&mdash;that of putting Mr. Damer into a good
+humour.</p>
+<p>In this he succeeded so well that by the time they had
+remounted, after crossing the Nile, Mr. Damer opened his heart to
+his companion on the subject that was troubling him, and told him
+all about Miss Dawkins.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why we should have a companion that
+we don&rsquo;t like for eight or ten weeks, merely because it
+seems rude to refuse a lady.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Indeed, I agree with you,&rdquo; said Mr. Ingram;
+&ldquo;I should call it weak-minded to give way in such a
+case.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My daughter does not like her at all,&rdquo; continued
+Mr. Damer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nor would she be a nice companion for Miss Damer; not
+according to my way of thinking,&rdquo; said Mr. Ingram.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And as to my having asked her, or Mrs. Damer having
+asked her!&nbsp; Why, God bless my soul, it is pure invention on
+the woman&rsquo;s part!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ha! ha! ha!&rdquo; laughed Mr. Ingram; &ldquo;I must
+say she plays her game well; but then she is an old soldier, and
+has the benefit of experience.&rdquo;&nbsp; What would Miss
+Dawkins have said had she known that Mr. Ingram called her an old
+soldier?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like the kind of thing at all,&rdquo;
+said Mr. Damer, who was very serious upon the subject.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;You see the position in which I am placed.&nbsp; I am
+forced to be very rude, or&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t call it rude at all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Disobliging, then; or else I must have all my comfort
+invaded and pleasure destroyed by, by, by&mdash;&rdquo;&nbsp; And
+Mr. Damer paused, being at a loss for an appropriate name for
+Miss Dawkins.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By an unprotected female,&rdquo; suggested Mr.
+Ingram.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, just so.&nbsp; I am as fond of pleasant company as
+anybody; but then I like to choose it myself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So do I,&rdquo; said Mr. Ingram, thinking of his own
+choice.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, Ingram, if you would join us, we should be
+delighted.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Upon my word, sir, the offer is too flattering,&rdquo;
+said Ingram, hesitatingly; for he felt that he could not
+undertake such a journey until Mr. Damer knew on what terms he
+stood with Fanny.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are a terrible democrat,&rdquo; said Mr. Damer,
+laughing; &ldquo;but then, on that matter, you know, we could
+agree to differ.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Exactly so,&rdquo; said Mr. Ingram, who had not
+collected his thoughts or made up his mind as to what he had
+better say and do, on the spur of the moment.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, what do you say to it?&rdquo; said Mr. Damer,
+encouragingly.&nbsp; But Ingram paused before he answered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For Heaven&rsquo;s sake, my dear fellow, don&rsquo;t
+have the slightest hesitation in refusing, if you don&rsquo;t
+like the plan.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The fact is, Mr. Damer, I should like it too
+well.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Like it too well?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir, and I may as well tell you now as
+later.&nbsp; I had intended this evening to have asked for your
+permission to address your daughter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;God bless my soul!&rdquo; said Mr. Damer, looking as
+though a totally new idea had now been opened to him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And under these circumstances, I will now wait and see
+whether or no you will renew your offer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;God bless my soul!&rdquo; said Mr. Damer, again.&nbsp;
+It often does strike an old gentleman as very odd that any man
+should fall in love with his daughter, whom he has not ceased to
+look upon as a child.&nbsp; The case is generally quite different
+with mothers.&nbsp; They seem to think that every young man must
+fall in love with their girls.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And have you said anything to Fanny about this?&rdquo;
+asked Mr. Damer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir, I have her permission to speak to
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;God bless my soul!&rdquo; said Mr. Damer; and by this
+time they had arrived at Shepheard&rsquo;s Hotel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, mamma,&rdquo; said Fanny, as soon as she found
+herself alone with her mother that evening, &ldquo;I have
+something that I must tell you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Fanny, don&rsquo;t tell me anything to-night, for I
+am a great deal too tired to listen.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But oh, mamma, pray;&mdash;you must listen to this;
+indeed you must.&rdquo;&nbsp; And Fanny knelt down at her
+mother&rsquo;s knee, and looked beseechingly up into her
+face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is it, Fanny?&nbsp; You know that all my bones are
+sore, and I am so tired that I am almost dead.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mamma, Mr. Ingram has&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Has what, my dear? has he done anything
+wrong?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, mamma: but he has;&mdash;he has proposed to
+me.&rdquo;&nbsp; And Fanny, bursting into tears, hid her face in
+her mother&rsquo;s lap.</p>
+<p>And thus the story was told on both sides of the house.&nbsp;
+On the next day, as a matter of course, all the difficulties and
+dangers of such a marriage as that which was now projected were
+insisted on by both father and mother.&nbsp; It was improper; it
+would cause a severing of the family not to be thought of; it
+would be an alliance of a dangerous nature, and not at all
+calculated to insure happiness; and, in short, it was
+impossible.&nbsp; On that day, therefore, they all went to bed
+very unhappy.&nbsp; But on the next day, as was also a matter of
+course, seeing that there were no pecuniary difficulties, the
+mother and father were talked over, and Mr. Ingram was accepted
+as a son-in-law.&nbsp; It need hardly be said that the offer of a
+place in Mr. Damer&rsquo;s boat was again made, and that on this
+occasion it was accepted without hesitation.</p>
+<p>There was an American Protestant clergyman resident in Cairo,
+with whom, among other persons, Miss Dawkins had become
+acquainted.&nbsp; Upon this gentleman or upon his wife Miss
+Dawkins called a few days after the journey to the Pyramid, and
+finding him in his study, thus performed her duty to her
+neighbour,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You know your countryman Mr. Ingram, I think?&rdquo;
+said she.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes; very intimately.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you have any regard for him, Mr. Burton,&rdquo; such
+was the gentleman&rsquo;s name, &ldquo;I think you should put him
+on his guard.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On his guard against what?&rdquo; said Mr. Burton with
+a serious air, for there was something serious in the threat of
+impending misfortune as conveyed by Miss Dawkins.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;those Damers, I fear, are
+dangerous people.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean that they will borrow money of
+him?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, no; not that, exactly; but they are clearly setting
+their cap at him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Setting their cap at him?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes; there is a daughter, you know; a little chit of a
+thing; and I fear Mr. Ingram may be caught before he knows where
+he is.&nbsp; It would be such a pity, you know.&nbsp; He is going
+up the river with them, I hear.&nbsp; That, in his place, is very
+foolish.&nbsp; They asked me, but I positively
+refused.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Burton remarked that &ldquo;In such a matter as that Mr.
+Ingram would be perfectly able to take care of
+himself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, perhaps so; but seeing what was going on, I
+thought it my duty to tell you.&rdquo;&nbsp; And so Miss Dawkins
+took her leave.</p>
+<p>Mr. Ingram did go up the Nile with the Damers, as did an old
+friend of the Damers who arrived from England.&nbsp; And a very
+pleasant trip they had of it.&nbsp; And, as far as the present
+historian knows, the two lovers were shortly afterwards married
+in England.</p>
+<p>Poor Miss Dawkins was left in Cairo for some time on her beam
+ends.&nbsp; But she was one of those who are not easily
+vanquished.&nbsp; After an interval of ten days she made
+acquaintance with an Irish family&mdash;having utterly failed in
+moving the hard heart of M. Delabordeau&mdash;and with these she
+proceeded to Constantinople.&nbsp; They consisted of two brothers
+and a sister, and were, therefore, very convenient for
+matrimonial purposes.&nbsp; But nevertheless, when I last heard
+of Miss Dawkins, she was still an unprotected female.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN UNPROTECTED FEMALE AT THE
+PYRAMIDS***</p>
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+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk,
+from the 1864 Chapman & Hall "Tales of all Countries" edition.
+
+
+
+
+
+AN UNPROTECTED FEMALE AT THE PYRAMIDS
+
+by Anthony Trollope
+
+
+
+
+In the happy days when we were young, no description conveyed to us so
+complete an idea of mysterious reality as that of an Oriental city.  We
+knew it was actually there, but had such vague notions of its ways and
+looks!  Let any one remember his early impressions as to Bagdad or
+Grand Cairo, and then say if this was not so.  It was probably taken
+from the "Arabian Nights," and the picture produced was one of strange,
+fantastic, luxurious houses; of women who were either very young and
+very beautiful, or else very old and very cunning; but in either state
+exercising much more influence in life than women in the East do now;
+of good-natured, capricious, though sometimes tyrannical monarchs; and
+of life full of quaint mysteries, quite unintelligible in every phasis,
+and on that account the more picturesque.
+
+And perhaps Grand Cairo has thus filled us with more wonder even than
+Bagdad.  We have been in a certain manner at home at Bagdad, but have
+only visited Grand Cairo occasionally.  I know no place which was to
+me, in early years, so delightfully mysterious as Grand Cairo.
+
+But the route to India and Australia has changed all this.  Men from
+all countries going to the East, now pass through Cairo, and its
+streets and costumes are no longer strange to us.  It has become also a
+resort for invalids, or rather for those who fear that they may become
+invalids if they remain in a cold climate during the winter months.
+And thus at Cairo there is always to be found a considerable population
+of French, Americans, and of English.  Oriental life is brought home to
+us, dreadfully diluted by western customs, and the delights of the
+"Arabian Nights" are shorn of half their value.  When we have seen a
+thing it is never so magnificent to us as when it was half unknown.
+
+It is not much that we deign to learn from these Orientals,--we who
+glory in our civilisation.  We do not copy their silence or their
+abstemiousness, nor that invariable mindfulness of his own personal
+dignity which always adheres to a Turk or to an Arab.  We chatter as
+much at Cairo as elsewhere, and eat as much and drink as much, and
+dress ourselves generally in the same old ugly costume.  But we do
+usually take upon ourselves to wear red caps, and we do ride on
+donkeys.
+
+Nor are the visitors from the West to Cairo by any means confined to
+the male sex.  Ladies are to be seen in the streets quite regardless of
+the Mahommedan custom which presumes a veil to be necessary for an
+appearance in public; and, to tell the truth, the Mahommedans in
+general do not appear to be much shocked by their effrontery.
+
+A quarter of the town has in this way become inhabited by men wearing
+coats and waistcoats, and by women who are without veils; but the
+English tongue in Egypt finds its centre at Shepheard's Hotel.  It is
+here that people congregate who are looking out for parties to visit
+with them the Upper Nile, and who are generally all smiles and
+courtesy; and here also are to be found they who have just returned
+from this journey, and who are often in a frame of mind towards their
+companions that is much less amiable.  From hence, during the winter, a
+cortege proceeds almost daily to the pyramids, or to Memphis, or to the
+petrified forest, or to the City of the Sun.  And then, again, four or
+five times a month the house is filled with young aspirants going out
+to India, male and female, full of valour and bloom; or with others
+coming home, no longer young, no longer aspiring, but laden with
+children and grievances.
+
+The party with whom we are at present concerned is not about to proceed
+further than the Pyramids, and we shall be able to go with them and
+return in one and the same day.
+
+It consisted chiefly of an English family, Mr. and Mrs. Damer, their
+daughter, and two young sons;--of these chiefly, because they were the
+nucleus to which the others had attached themselves as adherents; they
+had originated the journey, and in the whole management of it Mr. Damer
+retarded himself as the master.
+
+The adherents were, firstly, M. Delabordeau, a Frenchman, now resident
+in Cairo, who had given out that he was in some way concerned in the
+canal about to be made between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.  In
+discussion on this subject he had become acquainted with Mr. Damer; and
+although the latter gentleman, true to English interests, perpetually
+declared that the canal would never be made, and thus irritated M.
+Delabordeau not a little--nevertheless, some measure of friendship had
+grown up between them.
+
+There was also an American gentleman, Mr. Jefferson Ingram, who was
+comprising all countries and all nations in one grand tour, as American
+gentlemen so often do.  He was young and good-looking, and had made
+himself especially agreeable to Mr. Damer, who had declared, more than
+once, that Mr. Ingram was by far the most rational American he had ever
+met.  Mr. Ingram would listen to Mr. Damer by the half-hour as to the
+virtue of the British Constitution, and had even sat by almost with
+patience when Mr. Damer had expressed a doubt as to the good working of
+the United States' scheme of policy,--which, in an American, was most
+wonderful.  But some of the sojourners at Shepheard's had observed that
+Mr. Ingram was in the habit of talking with Miss Damer almost as much
+as with her father, and argued from that, that fond as the young man
+was of politics, he did sometimes turn his mind to other things also.
+
+And then there was Miss Dawkins.  Now Miss Dawkins was an important
+person, both as to herself and as to her line of life, and she must be
+described.  She was, in the first place, an unprotected female of about
+thirty years of age.  As this is becoming an established profession,
+setting itself up as it were in opposition to the old world idea that
+women, like green peas, cannot come to perfection without supporting-
+sticks, it will be understood at once what were Miss Dawkins's
+sentiments.  She considered--or at any rate so expressed herself--that
+peas could grow very well without sticks, and could not only grow thus
+unsupported, but could also make their way about the world without any
+incumbrance of sticks whatsoever.  She did not intend, she said, to
+rival Ida Pfeiffer, seeing that she was attached in a moderate way to
+bed and board, and was attached to society in a manner almost more than
+moderate; but she had no idea of being prevented from seeing anything
+she wished to see because she had neither father, nor husband, nor
+brother available for the purpose of escort.  She was a human creature,
+with arms and legs, she said; and she intended to use them.  And this
+was all very well; but nevertheless she had a strong inclination to use
+the arms and legs of other people when she could make them serviceable.
+
+In person Miss Dawkins was not without attraction.  I should exaggerate
+if I were to say that she was beautiful and elegant; but she was good
+looking, and not usually ill mannered.  She was tall, and gifted with
+features rather sharp and with eyes very bright.  Her hair was of the
+darkest shade of brown, and was always worn in bandeaux, very neatly.
+She appeared generally in black, though other circumstances did not
+lead one to suppose that she was in mourning; and then, no other
+travelling costume is so convenient!  She always wore a dark broad-
+brimmed straw hat, as to the ribbons on which she was rather
+particular.  She was very neat about her gloves and boots; and though
+it cannot be said that her dress was got up without reference to
+expense, there can be no doubt that it was not effected without
+considerable outlay,--and more considerable thought.
+
+Miss Dawkins--Sabrina Dawkins was her name, but she seldom had friends
+about her intimate enough to use the word Sabrina--was certainly a
+clever young woman.  She could talk on most subjects, if not well, at
+least well enough to amuse.  If she had not read much, she never showed
+any lamentable deficiency; she was good-humoured, as a rule, and could
+on occasions be very soft and winning.  People who had known her long
+would sometimes say that she was selfish; but with new acquaintance she
+was forbearing and self-denying.
+
+With what income Miss Dawkins was blessed no one seemed to know.  She
+lived like a gentlewoman, as far as outward appearance went, and never
+seemed to be in want; but some people would say that she knew very well
+how many sides there were to a shilling, and some enemy had once
+declared that she was an "old soldier."  Such was Miss Dawkins.
+
+She also, as well as Mr. Ingram and M. Delabordeau, had laid herself
+out to find the weak side of Mr. Damer.  Mr. Damer, with all his
+family, was going up the Nile, and it was known that he had room for
+two in his boat over and above his own family.  Miss Dawkins had told
+him that she had not quite made up her mind to undergo so great a
+fatigue, but that, nevertheless, she had a longing of the soul to see
+something of Nubia.  To this Mr. Damer had answered nothing but "Oh!"
+which Miss Dawkins had not found to be encouraging.
+
+But she had not on that account despaired.  To a married man there are
+always two sides, and in this instance there was Mrs. Damer as well as
+Mr. Damer.  When Mr. Damer said "Oh!" Miss Dawkins sighed, and said,
+"Yes, indeed!" then smiled, and betook herself to Mrs. Damer.
+
+Now Mrs. Damer was soft-hearted, and also somewhat old-fashioned.  She
+did not conceive any violent affection for Miss Dawkins, but she told
+her daughter that "the single lady by herself was a very nice young
+woman, and that it was a thousand pities she should have to go about so
+much alone like."
+
+Miss Damer had turned up her pretty nose, thinking, perhaps, how small
+was the chance that it ever should be her own lot to be an unprotected
+female.  But Miss Dawkins carried her point at any rate as regarded the
+expedition to the Pyramids.
+
+Miss Damer, I have said, had a pretty nose.  I may also say that she
+had pretty eyes, mouth, and chin, with other necessary appendages, all
+pretty.  As to the two Master Damers, who were respectively of the ages
+of fifteen and sixteen, it may be sufficient to say that they were
+conspicuous for red caps and for the constancy with which they raced
+their donkeys.
+
+And now the donkeys, and the donkey boys, and the dragomans were all
+standing at the steps of Shepheard's Hotel.  To each donkey there was a
+donkey-boy, and to each gentleman there was a dragoman, so that a
+goodly cortege was assembled, and a goodly noise was made.  It may here
+be remarked, perhaps with some little pride, that not half the noise is
+given in Egypt to persons speaking any other language that is bestowed
+on those whose vocabulary is English.
+
+This lasted for half an hour.  Had the party been French the donkeys
+would have arrived only fifteen minutes before the appointed time.  And
+then out came Damer pere and Damer mere, Damer fille, and Damer fils.
+Damer mere was leaning on her husband, as was her wont.  She was not an
+unprotected female, and had no desire to make any attempts in that
+line.  Damer fille was attended sedulously by Mr. Ingram, for whose
+demolishment, however, Mr. Damer still brought up, in a loud voice, the
+fag ends of certain political arguments which he would fain have poured
+direct into the ears of his opponent, had not his wife been so
+persistent in claiming her privileges.  M. Delabordeau should have
+followed with Miss Dawkins, but his French politeness, or else his fear
+of the unprotected female, taught him to walk on the other side of the
+mistress of the party.
+
+Miss Dawkins left the house with an eager young Damer yelling on each
+side of her; but nevertheless, though thus neglected by the gentlemen
+of the party, she was all smiles and prettiness, and looked so sweetly
+on Mr. Ingram when that gentleman stayed a moment to help her on to her
+donkey, that his heart almost misgave him for leaving her as soon as
+she was in her seat.
+
+And then they were off.  In going from the hotel to the Pyramids our
+party had not to pass through any of the queer old narrow streets of
+the true Cairo--Cairo the Oriental.  They all lay behind them as they
+went down by the back of the hotel, by the barracks of the Pasha and
+the College of the Dervishes, to the village of old Cairo and the banks
+of the Nile.
+
+Here they were kept half an hour while their dragomans made a bargain
+with the ferryman, a stately reis, or captain of a boat, who declared
+with much dignity that he could not carry them over for a sum less than
+six times the amount to which he was justly entitled; while the
+dragomans, with great energy on behalf of their masters, offered him
+only five times that sum.
+
+As far as the reis was concerned, the contest might soon have been at
+an end, for the man was not without a conscience; and would have been
+content with five times and a half; but then the three dragomans
+quarrelled among themselves as to which should have the paying of the
+money, and the affair became very tedious.
+
+"What horrid, odious men!" said Miss Dawkins, appealing to Mr. Damer.
+"Do you think they will let us go over at all?"
+
+"Well, I suppose they will; people do get over generally, I believe.
+Abdallah!  Abdallah! why don't you pay the man?  That fellow is always
+striving to save half a piastre for me."
+
+"I wish he wasn't quite so particular," said Mrs. Damer, who was
+already becoming rather tired; "but I'm sure he's a very honest man in
+trying to protect us from being robbed."
+
+"That he is," said Miss Dawkins.  "What a delightful trait of national
+character it is to see these men so faithful to their employers."  And
+then at last they got over the ferry, Mr. Ingram having descended among
+the combatants, and settled the matter in dispute by threats and
+shouts, and an uplifted stick.
+
+They crossed the broad Nile exactly at the spot where the nilometer, or
+river guage, measures from day to day, and from year to year, the
+increasing or decreasing treasures of the stream, and landed at a
+village where thousands of eggs are made into chickens by the process
+of artificial incubation.
+
+Mrs. Damer thought that it was very hard upon the maternal hens--the
+hens which should have been maternal--that they should be thus robbed
+of the delights of motherhood.
+
+"So unnatural, you know," said Miss Dawkins; "so opposed to the
+fostering principles of creation.  Don't you think so, Mr. Ingram?"
+
+Mr. Ingram said he didn't know.  He was again seating Miss Damer on her
+donkey, and it must be presumed that he performed this feat clumsily;
+for Fanny Damer could jump on and off the animal with hardly a finger
+to help her, when her brother or her father was her escort; but now,
+under the hands of Mr. Ingram, this work of mounting was one which
+required considerable time and care.  All which Miss Dawkins observed
+with precision.
+
+"It's all very well talking," said Mr. Damer, bringing up his donkey
+nearly alongside that of Mr. Ingram, and ignoring his daughter's
+presence, just as he would have done that of his dog; "but you must
+admit that political power is more equally distributed in England than
+it is in America."
+
+"Perhaps it is," said Mr. Ingram; "equally distributed among, we will
+say, three dozen families," and he made a feint as though to hold in
+his impetuous donkey, using the spur, however, at the same time on the
+side that was unseen by Mr. Damer.  As he did so, Fanny's donkey became
+equally impetuous, and the two cantered on in advance of the whole
+party.  It was quite in vain that Mr. Damer, at the top of his voice,
+shouted out something about "three dozen corruptible demagogues."  Mr.
+Ingram found it quite impossible to restrain his donkey so as to listen
+to the sarcasm.
+
+"I do believe papa would talk politics," said Fanny, "if he were at the
+top of Mont Blanc, or under the Falls of Niagara.  I do hate politics,
+Mr. Ingram."
+
+"I am sorry for that, very," said Mr. Ingram, almost sadly.
+
+"Sorry, why?  You don't want me to talk politics, do you?"
+
+"In America we are all politicians, more or less; and, therefore, I
+suppose you will hate us all."
+
+"Well, I rather think I should," said Fanny; "you would be such bores."
+But there was something in her eye, as she spoke, which atoned for the
+harshness of her words.
+
+"A very nice young man is Mr. Ingram; don't you think so?" said Miss
+Dawkins to Mrs. Damer.  Mrs. Damer was going along upon her donkey, not
+altogether comfortably.  She much wished to have her lord and
+legitimate protector by her side, but he had left her to the care of a
+dragoman whose English was not intelligible to her, and she was rather
+cross.
+
+"Indeed, Miss Dawkins, I don't know who are nice and who are not.  This
+nasty donkey stumbles at ever step.  There!  I know I shall be down
+directly."
+
+"You need not be at all afraid of that; they are perfectly safe, I
+believe, always," said Miss Dawkins, rising in her stirrup, and
+handling her reins quite triumphantly.  "A very little practice will
+make you quite at home."
+
+"I don't know what you mean by a very little practice.  I have been
+here six weeks.  Why did you put me on such a bad donkey as this?" and
+she turned to Abdallah, the dragoman.
+
+"Him berry good donkey, my lady; berry good,--best of all.  Call him
+Jack in Cairo.  Him go to Pyramid and back, and mind noting."
+
+"What does he say, Miss Dawkins?"
+
+"He says that that donkey is one called Jack.  If so I've had him
+myself many times, and Jack is a very good donkey."
+
+"I wish you had him now with all my heart," said Mrs. Damer.  Upon
+which Miss Dawkins offered to change; but those perils of mounting and
+dismounting were to Mrs. Damer a great deal too severe to admit of
+this.
+
+"Seven miles of canal to be carried out into the sea, at a minimum
+depth of twenty-three feet, and the stone to be fetched from Heaven
+knows where!  All the money in France wouldn't do it."  This was
+addressed by Mr. Damer to M. Delabordeau, whom he had caught after the
+abrupt flight of Mr. Ingram.
+
+"Den we will borrow a leetle from England," said M. Delabordeau.
+
+"Precious little, I can tell you.  Such stock would not hold its price
+in our markets for twenty-four hours.  If it were made, the freights
+would be too heavy to allow of merchandise passing through.  The heavy
+goods would all go round; and as for passengers and mails, you don't
+expect to get them, I suppose, while there is a railroad ready made to
+their hand?"
+
+"Ye vill carry all your ships through vidout any transportation.  Think
+of that, my friend."
+
+"Pshaw!  You are worse than Ingram.  Of all the plans I ever heard of
+it is the most monstrous, the most impracticable, the most--"  But here
+he was interrupted by the entreaties of his wife, who had, in absolute
+deed and fact, slipped from her donkey, and was now calling lustily for
+her husband's aid.  Whereupon Miss Dawkins allied herself to the
+Frenchman, and listened with an air of strong conviction to those
+arguments which were so weak in the ears of Mr. Damer.  M. Delabordeau
+was about to ride across the Great Desert to Jerusalem, and it might
+perhaps be quite as well to do that with him, as to go up the Nile as
+far as the second cataract with the Damers.
+
+"And so, M. Delabordeau, you intend really to start for Mount Sinai?"
+
+"Yes, mees; ve intend to make one start on Monday week."
+
+"And so on to Jerusalem.  You are quite right.  It would be a thousand
+pities to be in these countries, and to return without going over such
+ground as that.  I shall certainly go to Jerusalem myself by that
+route."
+
+"Vot, mees! you?  Would you not find it too much fatigante?"
+
+"I care nothing for fatigue, if I like the party I am with,--nothing at
+all, literally.  You will hardly understand me, perhaps, M.
+Delabordeau; but I do not see any reason why I, as a young woman,
+should not make any journey that is practicable for a young man."
+
+"Ah! dat is great resolution for you, mees."
+
+"I mean as far as fatigue is concerned.  You are a Frenchman, and
+belong to the nation that is at the head of all human civilisation--"
+
+M. Delabordeau took off his hat and bowed low, to the peak of his
+donkey saddle.  He dearly loved to hear his country praised, as Miss
+Dawkins was aware.
+
+"And I am sure you must agree with me," continued Miss Dawkins, "that
+the time is gone by for women to consider themselves helpless animals,
+or to be so considered by others."
+
+"Mees Dawkins vould never be considered, not in any times at all, to be
+one helpless animal," said M. Delabordeau civilly.
+
+"I do not, at any rate, intend to be so regarded," said she.  "It suits
+me to travel alone; not that I am averse to society; quite the
+contrary; if I meet pleasant people I am always ready to join them.
+But it suits me to travel without any permanent party, and I do not see
+why false shame should prevent my seeing the world as thoroughly as
+though I belonged to the other sex.  Why should it, M. Delabordeau?"
+
+M. Delabordeau declared that he did not see any reason why it should.
+
+"I am passionately anxious to stand upon Mount Sinai," continued Miss
+Dawkins; "to press with my feet the earliest spot in sacred history, of
+the identity of which we are certain; to feel within me the awe-
+inspiring thrill of that thrice sacred hour!"
+
+The Frenchman looked as though he did not quite understand her, but he
+said that it would be magnifique.
+
+"You have already made up your party I suppose, M. Delabordeau?"
+
+M. Delabordeau gave the names of two Frenchmen and one Englishman who
+were going with him.
+
+"Upon my word it is a great temptation to join you," said Miss Dawkins,
+"only for that horrid Englishman."
+
+"Vat, Mr. Stanley?"
+
+"Oh, I don't mean any disrespect to Mr. Stanley.  The horridness I
+speak of does not attach to him personally, but to his stiff,
+respectable, ungainly, well-behaved, irrational, and uncivilised
+country.  You see I am not very patriotic."
+
+"Not quite so much as my friend, Mr. Damer."
+
+"Ha! ha! ha! an excellent creature, isn't he?  And so they all are,
+dear creatures.  But then they are so backward.  They are most anxious
+that I should join them up the Nile, but--," and then Miss Dawkins
+shrugged her shoulders gracefully, and, as she flattered herself, like
+a Frenchwoman.  After that they rode on in silence for a few moments.
+
+"Yes, I must see Mount Sinai," said Miss Dawkins, and then sighed
+deeply.  M. Delabordeau, notwithstanding that his country does stand at
+the head of all human civilisation, was not courteous enough to declare
+that if Miss Dawkins would join his party across the desert, nothing
+would be wanting to make his beatitude in this world perfect.
+
+Their road from the village of the chicken-batching ovens lay up along
+the left bank of the Nile, through an immense grove of lofty palm-
+trees, looking out from among which our visitors could ever and anon
+see the heads of the two great Pyramids;--that is, such of them could
+see it as felt any solicitude in the matter.
+
+It is astonishing how such things lose their great charm as men find
+themselves in their close neighbourhood.  To one living in New York or
+London, how ecstatic is the interest inspired by these huge structures.
+One feels that no price would be too high to pay for seeing them as
+long as time and distance, and the world's inexorable task-work, forbid
+such a visit.  How intense would be the delight of climbing over the
+wondrous handiwork of those wondrous architects so long since dead; how
+thrilling the awe with which one would penetrate down into their
+interior caves--those caves in which lay buried the bones of ancient
+kings, whose very names seem to have come to us almost from another
+world!
+
+But all these feelings become strangely dim, their acute edges
+wonderfully worn, as the subjects which inspired them are brought near
+to us.  "Ah! so those are the Pyramids, are they?" says the traveller,
+when the first glimpse of them is shown to him from the window of a
+railway carriage.  "Dear me; they don't look so very high, do they?
+For Heaven's sake put the blind down, or we shall be destroyed by the
+dust."  And then the ecstasy and keen delight of the Pyramids has
+vanished for ever.
+
+Our friends, therefore, who for weeks past had seen from a distance,
+though they had not yet visited them, did not seem to have any strong
+feeling on the subject as they trotted through the grove of palm-trees.
+Mr. Damer had not yet escaped from his wife, who was still fretful from
+the result of her little accident.
+
+"It was all the chattering of that Miss Dawkins," said Mrs. Damer.
+"She would not let me attend to what I was doing."
+
+"Miss Dawkins is an ass," said her husband.
+
+"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."
+
+"How on earth we are to eat and drink with those nasty Arab people
+around us, I can't conceive.  They tell me we shall be eaten up by
+them.  But, Fanny, what has Mr. Ingram been saying to you all the day?"
+
+"What has he been saying, mamma?  Oh!  I don't know;--a hundred things,
+I dare say.  But he has not been talking to me all the time."
+
+"I think he has, Fanny, nearly, since we crossed the river.  Oh, dear!
+oh, dear! this animal does hurt me so!  Every time he moves he flings
+his head about, and that gives me such a bump."  And then Fanny
+commiserated her mother's sufferings, and in her commiseration
+contrived to elude any further questionings as to Mr. Ingram's
+conversation.
+
+"Majestic piles, are they not?" said Miss Dawkins, who, having changed
+her companion, allowed her mind to revert from Mount Sinai to the
+Pyramids.  They were now riding through cultivated ground, with the
+vast extent of the sands of Libya before them.  The two Pyramids were
+standing on the margin of the sand, with the head of the recumbent
+sphynx plainly visible between them.  But no idea can be formed of the
+size of this immense figure till it is visited much more closely.  The
+body is covered with sand, and the head and neck alone stand above the
+surface of the ground.  They were still two miles distant, and the
+sphynx as yet was but an obscure mount between the two vast Pyramids.
+
+"Immense piles!" said Miss Dawkins, repeating her own words.
+
+"Yes, they are large," said Mr. Ingram, who did not choose to indulge
+in enthusiasm in the presence of Miss Dawkins.
+
+"Enormous!  What a grand idea!--eh, Mr. Ingram?  The human race does
+not create such things as those nowadays!"
+
+"No, indeed," he answered; "but perhaps we create better things."
+
+"Better!  You do not mean to say, Mr. Ingram, that you are an
+utilitarian.  I do, in truth, hope better things of you than that.
+Yes! steam mills are better, no doubt, and mechanics' institutes and
+penny newspapers.  But is nothing to be valued but what is useful?"
+And Miss Dawkins, in the height of her enthusiasm, switched her donkey
+severely over the shoulder.
+
+"I might, perhaps, have said also that we create more beautiful
+things," said Mr. Ingram.
+
+"But we cannot create older things."
+
+"No, certainly; we cannot do that."
+
+"Nor can we imbue what we do create with the grand associations which
+environ those piles with so intense an interest.  Think of the mighty
+dead, Mr. Ingram, and of their great homes when living.  Think of the
+hands which it took to raise those huge blocks--"
+
+"And of the lives which it cost."
+
+"Doubtless.  The tyranny and invincible power of the royal architects
+add to the grandeur of the idea.  One would not wish to have back the
+kings of Egypt."
+
+"Well, no; they would be neither useful nor beautiful."
+
+"Perhaps not; and I do not wish to be picturesque at the expense of my
+fellow-creatures."
+
+"I doubt, even, whether they would be picturesque."
+
+"You know what I mean, Mr. Ingram.  But the associations of such names,
+and the presence of the stupendous works with which they are connected,
+fill the soul with awe.  Such, at least, is the effect with mine."
+
+"I fear that my tendencies, Miss Dawkins, are more realistic than your
+own."
+
+"You belong to a young country, Mr. Ingram, and are naturally prone to
+think of material life.  The necessity of living looms large before
+you."
+
+"Very large, indeed, Miss Dawkins."
+
+"Whereas with us, with some of us at least, the material aspect has
+given place to one in which poetry and enthusiasm prevail.  To such
+among us the associations of past times are very dear.  Cheops, to me,
+is more than Napoleon Bonaparte."
+
+"That is more than most of your countrymen can say, at any rate, just
+at present."
+
+"I am a woman," continued Miss Dawkins.
+
+Mr. Ingram took off his hat in acknowledgment both of the announcement
+and of the fact.
+
+"And to us it is not given--not given as yet--to share in the great
+deeds of the present.  The envy of your sex has driven us from the
+paths which lead to honour.  But the deeds of the past are as much ours
+as yours."
+
+"Oh, quite as much."
+
+"'Tis to your country that we look for enfranchisement from this
+thraldom.  Yes, Mr. Ingram, the women of America have that strength of
+mind which has been wanting to those of Europe.  In the United States
+woman will at last learn to exercise her proper mission."
+
+Mr. Ingram expressed a sincere wish that such might be the case; and
+then wondering at the ingenuity with which Miss Dawkins had travelled
+round from Cheops and his Pyramid to the rights of women in America, he
+contrived to fall back, under the pretence of asking after the ailments
+of Mrs. Damer.
+
+And now at last they were on the sand, in the absolute desert, making
+their way up to the very foot of the most northern of the two Pyramids.
+They were by this time surrounded by a crowd of Arab guides, or Arabs
+professing to be guides, who had already ascertained that Mr. Damer was
+the chief of the party, and were accordingly driving him almost to
+madness by the offers of their services, and their assurance that he
+could not possibly see the outside or the inside of either structure,
+or even remain alive upon the ground, unless he at once accepted their
+offers made at their own prices.
+
+"Get away, will you?" said he.  "I don't want any of you, and I won't
+have you!  If you take hold of me I'll shoot you!"  This was said to
+one specially energetic Arab, who, in his efforts to secure his prey,
+had caught hold of Mr. Damer by the leg.
+
+"Yes, yes, I say!  Englishmen always take me;--me--me, and then no
+break him leg.  Yes--yes--yes;--I go.  Master, say yes.  Only one
+leetle ten shillings!"
+
+"Abdallah!" shouted Mr. Damer, "why don't you take this man away?  Why
+don't you make him understand that if all the Pyramids depended on it,
+I would not give him sixpence!"
+
+And then Abdallah, thus invoked, came up, and explained to the man in
+Arabic that he would gain his object more surely if he would behave
+himself a little more quietly; a hint which the man took for one
+minute, and for one minute only.
+
+And then poor Mrs. Damer replied to an application for backsheish by
+the gift of a sixpence.  Unfortunate woman!  The word backsheish means,
+I believe, a gift; but it has come in Egypt to signify money, and is
+eternally dinned into the ears of strangers by Arab suppliants.  Mrs.
+Damer ought to have known better, as, during the last six weeks she had
+never shown her face out of Shepheard's Hotel without being pestered
+for backsheish; but she was tired and weak, and foolishly thought to
+rid herself of the man who was annoying her.
+
+No sooner had the coin dropped from her hand into that of the Arab,
+than she was surrounded by a cluster of beggars, who loudly made their
+petitions as though they would, each of them, individually be injured
+if treated with less liberality than that first comer.  They took hold
+of her donkey, her bridle, her saddle, her legs, and at last her arms
+and hands, screaming for backsheish in voices that were neither sweet
+nor mild.
+
+In her dismay she did give away sundry small coins--all, probably, that
+she had about her; but this only made the matter worse.  Money was
+going, and each man, by sufficient energy, might hope to get some of
+it.  They were very energetic, and so frightened the poor lady that she
+would certainly have fallen, had she not been kept on her seat by the
+pressure around her.
+
+"Oh, dear! oh, dear! get away," she cried.  "I haven't got any more;
+indeed I haven't.  Go away, I tell you!  Mr. Damer! oh, Mr. Damer!" and
+then, in the excess of her agony, she uttered one loud, long, and
+continuous shriek.
+
+Up came Mr. Damer; up came Abdallah; up came M. Delabordeau; up came
+Mr. Ingram, and at last she was rescued.  "You shouldn't go away and
+leave me to the mercy of these nasty people.  As to that Abdallah, he
+is of no use to anybody."
+
+"Why you bodder de good lady, you dem blackguard?" said Abdallah,
+raising his stick, as though he were going to lay them all low with a
+blow.  "Now you get noting, you tief!"
+
+The Arabs for a moment retired to a little distance, like flies driven
+from a sugar-bowl; but it was easy to see that, like the flies, they
+would return at the first vacant moment.
+
+And now they had reached the very foot of the Pyramids and proceeded to
+dismount from their donkeys.  Their intention was first to ascend to
+the top, then to come down to their banquet, and after that to
+penetrate into the interior.  And all this would seem to be easy of
+performance.  The Pyramid is undoubtedly high, but it is so constructed
+as to admit of climbing without difficulty.  A lady mounting it would
+undoubtedly need some assistance, but any man possessed of moderate
+activity would require no aid at all.
+
+But our friends were at once imbued with the tremendous nature of the
+task before them.  A sheikh of the Arabs came forth, who communicated
+with them through Abdallah.  The work could be done, no doubt, he said;
+but a great many men would be wanted to assist.  Each lady must have
+four Arabs, and each gentlemen three; and then, seeing that the work
+would be peculiarly severe on this special day, each of these numerous
+Arabs must be remunerated by some very large number of piastres.
+
+Mr. Damer, who was by no means a close man in his money dealings,
+opened his eyes with surprise, and mildly expostulated; M. Delabordeau,
+who was rather a close man in his reckonings, immediately buttoned up
+his breeches pocket and declared that he should decline to mount the
+Pyramid at all at that price; and then Mr. Ingram descended to the
+combat.
+
+The protestations of the men were fearful.  They declared, with loud
+voices, eager actions, and manifold English oaths, that an attempt was
+being made to rob them.  They had a right to demand the sums which they
+were charging, and it was a shame that English gentlemen should come
+and take the bread out of their mouths.  And so they screeched,
+gesticulated, and swore, and frightened poor Mrs. Damer almost into
+fits.
+
+But at last it was settled and away they started, the sheikh declaring
+that the bargain had been made at so low a rate as to leave him not one
+piastre for himself.  Each man had an Arab on each side of him, and
+Miss Dawkins and Miss Damer had each, in addition, one behind.  Mrs.
+Damer was so frightened as altogether to have lost all ambition to
+ascend.  She sat below on a fragment of stone, with the three dragomans
+standing around her as guards; but even with the three dragomans the
+attacks on her were so frequent, and as she declared afterwards she was
+so bewildered, that she never had time to remember that she had come
+there from England to see the Pyramids, and that she was now
+immediately under them.
+
+The boys, utterly ignoring their guides, scrambled up quicker than the
+Arabs could follow them.  Mr. Damer started off at a pace which soon
+brought him to the end of his tether, and from that point was dragged
+up by the sheer strength of his assistants; thereby accomplishing the
+wishes of the men, who induce their victims to start as rapidly as
+possible, in order that they may soon find themselves helpless from
+want of wind.  Mr. Ingram endeavoured to attach himself to Fanny, and
+she would have been nothing loth to have him at her right hand instead
+of the hideous brown, shrieking, one-eyed Arab who took hold of her.
+But it was soon found that any such arrangement was impossible.  Each
+guide felt that if he lost his own peculiar hold he would lose his
+prey, and held on, therefore, with invincible tenacity.  Miss Dawkins
+looked, too, as though she had thought to be attended to by some
+Christian cavalier, but no Christian cavalier was forthcoming.  M.
+Delabordeau was the wisest, for he took the matter quietly, did as he
+was bid, and allowed the guides nearly to carry him to the top of the
+edifice.
+
+"Ha! so this is the top of the Pyramid, is it?" said Mr. Damer,
+bringing out his words one by one, being terribly out of breath.  "Very
+wonderful, very wonderful, indeed!"
+
+"It is wonderful," said Miss Dawkins, whose breath had not failed her
+in the least, "very wonderful, indeed!  Only think, Mr. Damer, you
+might travel on for days and days, till days became months, through
+those interminable sands, and yet you would never come to the end of
+them.  Is it not quite stupendous?"
+
+"Ah, yes, quite,--puff, puff"--said Mr. Damer striving to regain his
+breath.
+
+Mr. Damer was now at her disposal; weak and worn with toil and travel,
+out of breath, and with half his manhood gone; if ever she might
+prevail over him so as to procure from his mouth an assent to that Nile
+proposition, it would be now.  And after all, that Nile proposition was
+the best one now before her.  She did not quite like the idea of
+starting off across the Great Desert without any lady, and was not sure
+that she was prepared to be fallen in love with by M. Delabordeau, even
+if there should ultimately be any readiness on the part of that
+gentleman to perform the role of lover.  With Mr. Ingram the matter was
+different, nor was she so diffident of her own charms as to think it
+altogether impossible that she might succeed, in the teeth of that
+little chit, Fanny Damer.  That Mr. Ingram would join the party up the
+Nile she had very little doubt; and then there would be one place left
+for her.  She would thus, at any rate, become commingled with a most
+respectable family, who might be of material service to her.
+
+Thus actuated she commenced an earnest attack upon Mr. Damer.
+
+"Stupendous!" she said again, for she was fond of repeating favourite
+words.  "What a wondrous race must have been those Egyptian kings of
+old!"
+
+"I dare say they were," said Mr. Damer, wiping his brow as he sat upon
+a large loose stone, a fragment lying on the flat top of the Pyramid,
+one of those stones with which the complete apex was once made, or was
+once about to be made.
+
+"A magnificent race! so gigantic in their conceptions!  Their ideas
+altogether overwhelm us poor, insignificant, latter-day mortals.  They
+built these vast Pyramids; but for us, it is task enough to climb to
+their top."
+
+"Quite enough," ejaculated Mr. Damer.
+
+But Mr. Damer would not always remain weak and out of breath, and it
+was absolutely necessary for Miss Dawkins to hurry away from Cheops and
+his tomb, to Thebes and Karnac.
+
+"After seeing this it is impossible for any one with a spark of
+imagination to leave Egypt without going farther a-field."
+
+Mr. Damer merely wiped his brow and grunted.  This Miss Dawkins took as
+a signal of weakness, and went on with her task perseveringly.
+
+"For myself, I have resolved to go up, at any rate, as far as Asouan
+and the first cataract.  I had thought of acceding to the wishes of a
+party who are going across the Great Desert by Mount Sinai to
+Jerusalem; but the kindness of yourself and Mrs. Damer is so great, and
+the prospect of joining in your boat is so pleasurable, that I have
+made up my mind to accept your very kind offer."
+
+This, it will be acknowledged, was bold on the part of Miss Dawkins;
+but what will not audacity effect?  To use the slang of modern
+language, cheek carries everything nowadays.  And whatever may have
+been Miss Dawkins's deficiencies, in this virtue she was not deficient.
+
+"I have made up my mind to accept your very kind offer," she said,
+shining on Mr. Damer with her blandest smile.
+
+What was a stout, breathless, perspiring, middle-aged gentleman to do
+under such circumstances?  Mr. Damer was a man who, in most matters,
+had his own way.  That his wife should have given such an invitation
+without consulting him, was, he knew, quite impossible.  She would as
+soon have thought of asking all those Arab guides to accompany them.
+Nor was it to be thought of that he should allow himself to be
+kidnapped into such an arrangement by the impudence of any Miss
+Dawkins.  But there was, he felt, a difficulty in answering such a
+proposition from a young lady with a direct negative, especially while
+he was so scant of breath.  So he wiped his brow again, and looked at
+her.
+
+"But I can only agree to this on one understanding," continued Miss
+Dawkins, "and that is, that I am allowed to defray my own full share of
+the expense of the journey."
+
+Upon hearing this Mr. Damer thought that he saw his way out of the
+wood.  "Wherever I go, Miss Dawkins, I am always the paymaster myself,"
+and this he contrived to say with some sternness, palpitating though he
+still was; and the sternness which was deficient in his voice he
+endeavoured to put into his countenance.
+
+But he did not know Miss Dawkins.  "Oh, Mr. Damer," she said, and as
+she spoke her smile became almost blander than it was before; "oh, Mr.
+Damer, I could not think of suffering you to be so liberal; I could
+not, indeed.  But I shall be quite content that you should pay
+everything, and let me settle with you in one sum afterwards."
+
+Mr. Damer's breath was now rather more under his own command.  "I am
+afraid, Miss Dawkins," he said, "that Mrs. Damer's weak state of health
+will not admit of such an arrangement."
+
+"What, about the paying?"
+
+"Not only as to that, but we are a family party, Miss Dawkins; and
+great as would be the benefit of your society to all of us, in Mrs.
+Damer's present state of health, I am afraid--in short, you would not
+find it agreeable.--And therefore--" this he added, seeing that she was
+still about to persevere--"I fear that we must forego the advantage you
+offer."
+
+And then, looking into his face, Miss Dawkins did perceive that even
+her audacity would not prevail.
+
+"Oh, very well," she said, and moving from the stone on which she had
+been sitting, she walked off, carrying her head very high, to a corner
+of the Pyramid from which she could look forth alone towards the sands
+of Libya.
+
+In the mean time another little overture was being made on the top of
+the same Pyramid,--an overture which was not received quite in the same
+spirit.  While Mr. Damer was recovering his breath for the sake of
+answering Miss Dawkins, Miss Damer had walked to the further corner of
+the square platform on which they were placed, and there sat herself
+down with her face turned towards Cairo.  Perhaps it was not singular
+that Mr. Ingram should have followed her.
+
+This would have been very well if a dozen Arabs had not also followed
+them.  But as this was the case, Mr. Ingram had to play his game under
+some difficulty.  He had no sooner seated himself beside her than they
+came and stood directly in front of the seat, shutting out the view,
+and by no means improving the fragrance of the air around them.
+
+"And this, then, Miss Damer, will be our last excursion together," he
+said, in his tenderest, softest tone.
+
+"De good Englishman will gib de poor Arab one little backsheish," said
+an Arab, putting out his hand and shaking Mr. Ingram's shoulder.
+
+"Yes, yes, yes; him gib backsheish," said another.
+
+"Him berry good man," said a third, putting up his filthy hand, and
+touching Mr. Ingram's face.
+
+"And young lady berry good, too; she give backsheish to poor Arab."
+
+"Yes," said a fourth, preparing to take a similar liberty with Miss
+Damer.
+
+This was too much for Mr. Ingram.  He had already used very positive
+language in his endeavour to assure his tormentors that they would not
+get a piastre from him.  But this only changed their soft persuasions
+into threats.  Upon hearing which, and upon seeing what the man
+attempted to do in his endeavour to get money from Miss Damer, he
+raised his stick, and struck first one and then the other as violently
+as he could upon their heads.
+
+Any ordinary civilised men would have been stunned by such blows, for
+they fell on the bare foreheads of the Arabs; but the objects of the
+American's wrath merely skulked away; and the others, convinced by the
+only arguments which they understood, followed in pursuit of victims
+who might be less pugnacious.
+
+It is hard for a man to be at once tender and pugnacious--to be
+sentimental, while he is putting forth his physical strength with all
+the violence in his power.  It is difficult, also, for him to be gentle
+instantly after having been in a rage.  So he changed his tactics at
+the moment, and came to the point at once in a manner befitting his
+present state of mind.
+
+"Those vile wretches have put me in such a heat," he said, "that I
+hardly know what I am saying.  But the fact is this, Miss Damer, I
+cannot leave Cairo without knowing--.  You understand what I mean, Miss
+Damer."
+
+"Indeed I do not, Mr. Ingram; except that I am afraid you mean
+nonsense."
+
+"Yes, you do; you know that I love you.  I am sure you must know it.
+At any rate you know it now."
+
+"Mr. Ingram, you should not talk in such a way."
+
+"Why should I not?  But the truth is, Fanny, I can talk in no other
+way.  I do love you dearly.  Can you love me well enough to go and be
+my wife in a country far away from your own?"
+
+Before she left the top of the Pyramid Fanny Damer had said that she
+would try.
+
+Mr. Ingram was now a proud and happy man, and seemed to think the steps
+of the Pyramid too small for his elastic energy.  But Fanny feared that
+her troubles were to come.  There was papa--that terrible bugbear on
+all such occasions.  What would papa say?  She was sure her papa would
+not allow her to marry and go so far away from her own family and
+country.  For herself, she liked the Americans--always had liked them;
+so she said;--would desire nothing better than to live among them.  But
+papa!  And Fanny sighed as she felt that all the recognised miseries of
+a young lady in love were about to fall upon her.
+
+Nevertheless, at her lover's instance, she promised, and declared, in
+twenty different loving phrases, that nothing on earth should ever make
+her false to her love or to her lover.
+
+"Fanny, where are you?  Why are you not ready to come down?" shouted
+Mr. Damer, not in the best of tempers.  He felt that he had almost been
+unkind to an unprotected female, and his heart misgave him.  And yet it
+would have misgiven him more had he allowed himself to be entrapped by
+Miss Dawkins.
+
+"I am quite ready, papa," said Fanny, running up to him--for it may be
+understood that there is quite room enough for a young lady to run on
+the top of the Pyramid.
+
+"I am sure I don't know where you have been all the time," said Mr.
+Damer; "and where are those two boys?"
+
+Fanny pointed to the top of the other Pyramid, and there they were,
+conspicuous with their red caps.
+
+"And M. Delabordeau?"
+
+"Oh! he has gone down, I think;--no, he is there with Miss Dawkins."
+And in truth Miss Dawkins was leaning on his arm most affectionately,
+as she stooped over and looked down upon the ruins below her.
+
+"And where is that fellow, Ingram?" said Mr. Damer, looking about him.
+"He is always out of the way when he's wanted."
+
+To this Fanny said nothing.  Why should she?  She was not Mr. Ingram's
+keeper.
+
+And then they all descended, each again with his proper number of Arabs
+to hurry and embarrass him; and they found Mr. Damer at the bottom,
+like a piece of sugar covered with flies.  She was heard to declare
+afterwards that she would not go to the Pyramids again, not if they
+were to be given to her for herself, as ornaments for her garden.
+
+The picnic lunch among the big stones at the foot of the Pyramid was
+not a very gay affair.  Miss Dawkins talked more than any one else,
+being determined to show that she bore her defeat gallantly.  Her
+conversation, however, was chiefly addressed to M. Delabordeau, and he
+seemed to think more of his cold chicken and ham than he did of her wit
+and attention.
+
+Fanny hardly spoke a word.  There was her father before her and she
+could not eat, much less talk, as she thought of all that she would
+have to go through.  What would he say to the idea of having an
+American for a son-in-law?
+
+Nor was Mr. Ingram very lively.  A young man when he has been just
+accepted, never is so.  His happiness under the present circumstances
+was, no doubt, intense, but it was of a silent nature.
+
+And then the interior of the building had to be visited.  To tell the
+truth none of the party would have cared to perform this feat had it
+not been for the honour of the thing.  To have come from Paris, New
+York, or London, to the Pyramids, and then not to have visited the very
+tomb of Cheops, would have shown on the part of all of them an
+indifference to subjects of interest which would have been altogether
+fatal to their character as travellers.  And so a party for the
+interior was made up.
+
+Miss Damer when she saw the aperture through which it was expected that
+she should descend, at once declared for staying with her mother.  Miss
+Dawkins, however, was enthusiastic for the journey.  "Persons with so
+very little command over their nerves might really as well stay at
+home," she said to Mr. Ingram, who glowered at her dreadfully for
+expressing such an opinion about his Fanny.
+
+This entrance into the Pyramids is a terrible task, which should be
+undertaken by no lady.  Those who perform it have to creep down, and
+then to be dragged up, through infinite dirt, foul smells, and bad air;
+and when they have done it, they see nothing.  But they do earn the
+gratification of saying that they have been inside a Pyramid.
+
+"Well, I've done that once," said Mr. Damer, coming out, "and I do not
+think that any one will catch me doing it again.  I never was in such a
+filthy place in my life."
+
+"Oh, Fanny! I am so glad you did not go; I am sure it is not fit for
+ladies," said poor Mrs. Damer, forgetful of her friend Miss Dawkins.
+
+"I should have been ashamed of myself," said Miss Dawkins, bristling
+up, and throwing back her head as she stood, "if I had allowed any
+consideration to have prevented my visiting such a spot.  If it be not
+improper for men to go there, how can it be improper for women?"
+
+"I did not say improper, my dear," said Mrs. Damer, apologetically.
+
+"And as for the fatigue, what can a woman be worth who is afraid to
+encounter as much as I have now gone through for the sake of visiting
+the last resting-place of such a king as Cheops?"  And Miss Dawkins, as
+she pronounced the last words, looked round her with disdain upon poor
+Fanny Damer.
+
+"But I meant the dirt," said Mrs. Damer.
+
+"Dirt!" ejaculated Miss Dawkins, and then walked away.  Why should she
+now submit her high tone of feeling to the Damers, or why care longer
+for their good opinion?  Therefore she scattered contempt around her as
+she ejaculated the last word, "dirt."
+
+And then the return home!  "I know I shall never get there," said Mrs.
+Damer, looking piteously up into her husband's face.
+
+"Nonsense, my dear; nonsense; you must get there."  Mrs. Damer groaned,
+and acknowledged in her heart that she must,--either dead or alive.
+
+"And, Jefferson," said Fanny, whispering--for there had been a moment
+since their descent in which she had been instructed to call him by his
+Christian name--"never mind talking to me going home.  I will ride by
+mamma.  Do you go with papa and put him in good humour; and it he says
+anything about the lords and the bishops, don't you contradict him, you
+know."
+
+What will not a man do for love?  Mr. Ingram promised.
+
+And in this way they started; the two boys led the van; then came Mr.
+Damer and Mr. Ingram, unusually and unpatriotically acquiescent as to
+England's aristocratic propensities; then Miss Dawkins riding, alas!
+alone; after her, M. Delabordeau, also alone,--the ungallant Frenchman!
+And the rear was brought up by Mrs. Damer and her daughter, flanked on
+each side by a dragoman, with a third dragoman behind them.
+
+And in this order they went back to Cairo, riding their donkeys, and
+crossing the ferry solemnly, and, for the most part, silently.  Mr.
+Ingram did talk, as he had an important object in view,--that of
+putting Mr. Damer into a good humour.
+
+In this he succeeded so well that by the time they had remounted, after
+crossing the Nile, Mr. Damer opened his heart to his companion on the
+subject that was troubling him, and told him all about Miss Dawkins.
+
+"I don't see why we should have a companion that we don't like for
+eight or ten weeks, merely because it seems rude to refuse a lady."
+
+"Indeed, I agree with you," said Mr. Ingram; "I should call it weak-
+minded to give way in such a case."
+
+"My daughter does not like her at all," continued Mr. Damer.
+
+"Nor would she be a nice companion for Miss Damer; not according to my
+way of thinking," said Mr. Ingram.
+
+"And as to my having asked her, or Mrs. Damer having asked her!  Why,
+God bless my soul, it is pure invention on the woman's part!"
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Mr. Ingram; "I must say she plays her game well;
+but then she is an old soldier, and has the benefit of experience."
+What would Miss Dawkins have said had she known that Mr. Ingram called
+her an old soldier?
+
+"I don't like the kind of thing at all," said Mr. Damer, who was very
+serious upon the subject.  "You see the position in which I am placed.
+I am forced to be very rude, or--"
+
+"I don't call it rude at all."
+
+"Disobliging, then; or else I must have all my comfort invaded and
+pleasure destroyed by, by, by--"  And Mr. Damer paused, being at a loss
+for an appropriate name for Miss Dawkins.
+
+"By an unprotected female," suggested Mr. Ingram.
+
+"Yes, just so.  I am as fond of pleasant company as anybody; but then I
+like to choose it myself."
+
+"So do I," said Mr. Ingram, thinking of his own choice.
+
+"Now, Ingram, if you would join us, we should be delighted."
+
+"Upon my word, sir, the offer is too flattering," said Ingram,
+hesitatingly; for he felt that he could not undertake such a journey
+until Mr. Damer knew on what terms he stood with Fanny.
+
+"You are a terrible democrat," said Mr. Damer, laughing; "but then, on
+that matter, you know, we could agree to differ."
+
+"Exactly so," said Mr. Ingram, who had not collected his thoughts or
+made up his mind as to what he had better say and do, on the spur of
+the moment.
+
+"Well, what do you say to it?" said Mr. Damer, encouragingly.  But
+Ingram paused before he answered.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, my dear fellow, don't have the slightest hesitation
+in refusing, if you don't like the plan."
+
+"The fact is, Mr. Damer, I should like it too well."
+
+"Like it too well?"
+
+"Yes, sir, and I may as well tell you now as later.  I had intended
+this evening to have asked for your permission to address your
+daughter."
+
+"God bless my soul!" said Mr. Damer, looking as though a totally new
+idea had now been opened to him.
+
+"And under these circumstances, I will now wait and see whether or no
+you will renew your offer."
+
+"God bless my soul!" said Mr. Damer, again.  It often does strike an
+old gentleman as very odd that any man should fall in love with his
+daughter, whom he has not ceased to look upon as a child.  The case is
+generally quite different with mothers.  They seem to think that every
+young man must fall in love with their girls.
+
+"And have you said anything to Fanny about this?" asked Mr. Damer.
+
+"Yes, sir, I have her permission to speak to you."
+
+"God bless my soul!" said Mr. Damer; and by this time they had arrived
+at Shepheard's Hotel.
+
+"Oh, mamma," said Fanny, as soon as she found herself alone with her
+mother that evening, "I have something that I must tell you."
+
+"Oh, Fanny, don't tell me anything to-night, for I am a great deal too
+tired to listen."
+
+"But oh, mamma, pray;--you must listen to this; indeed you must."  And
+Fanny knelt down at her mother's knee, and looked beseechingly up into
+her face.
+
+"What is it, Fanny?  You know that all my bones are sore, and I am so
+tired that I am almost dead."
+
+"Mamma, Mr. Ingram has--"
+
+"Has what, my dear? has he done anything wrong?"
+
+"No, mamma:  but he has;--he has proposed to me."  And Fanny, bursting
+into tears, hid her face in her mother's lap.
+
+And thus the story was told on both sides of the house.  On the next
+day, as a matter of course, all the difficulties and dangers of such a
+marriage as that which was now projected were insisted on by both
+father and mother.  It was improper; it would cause a severing of the
+family not to be thought of; it would be an alliance of a dangerous
+nature, and not at all calculated to insure happiness; and, in short,
+it was impossible.  On that day, therefore, they all went to bed very
+unhappy.  But on the next day, as was also a matter of course, seeing
+that there were no pecuniary difficulties, the mother and father were
+talked over, and Mr. Ingram was accepted as a son-in-law.  It need
+hardly be said that the offer of a place in Mr. Damer's boat was again
+made, and that on this occasion it was accepted without hesitation.
+
+There was an American Protestant clergyman resident in Cairo, with
+whom, among other persons, Miss Dawkins had become acquainted.  Upon
+this gentleman or upon his wife Miss Dawkins called a few days after
+the journey to the Pyramid, and finding him in his study, thus
+performed her duty to her neighbour, -
+
+"You know your countryman Mr. Ingram, I think?" said she.
+
+"Oh, yes; very intimately."
+
+"If you have any regard for him, Mr. Burton," such was the gentleman's
+name, "I think you should put him on his guard."
+
+"On his guard against what?" said Mr. Burton with a serious air, for
+there was something serious in the threat of impending misfortune as
+conveyed by Miss Dawkins.
+
+"Why," said she, "those Damers, I fear, are dangerous people."
+
+"Do you mean that they will borrow money of him?"
+
+"Oh, no; not that, exactly; but they are clearly setting their cap at
+him."
+
+"Setting their cap at him?"
+
+"Yes; there is a daughter, you know; a little chit of a thing; and I
+fear Mr. Ingram may be caught before he knows where he is.  It would be
+such a pity, you know.  He is going up the river with them, I hear.
+That, in his place, is very foolish.  They asked me, but I positively
+refused."
+
+Mr. Burton remarked that "In such a matter as that Mr. Ingram would be
+perfectly able to take care of himself."
+
+"Well, perhaps so; but seeing what was going on, I thought it my duty
+to tell you."  And so Miss Dawkins took her leave.
+
+Mr. Ingram did go up the Nile with the Damers, as did an old friend of
+the Damers who arrived from England.  And a very pleasant trip they had
+of it.  And, as far as the present historian knows, the two lovers were
+shortly afterwards married in England.
+
+Poor Miss Dawkins was left in Cairo for some time on her beam ends.
+But she was one of those who are not easily vanquished.  After an
+interval of ten days she made acquaintance with an Irish family--having
+utterly failed in moving the hard heart of M. Delabordeau--and with
+these she proceeded to Constantinople.  They consisted of two brothers
+and a sister, and were, therefore, very convenient for matrimonial
+purposes.  But nevertheless, when I last heard of Miss Dawkins, she was
+still an unprotected female.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of An Unprotected Female, by Trollope
+
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