[Footnote 1:  Among the Huts, p. 269.]

When her scholars were about to start for the “school-treat” to which reference has been made, a little boy, looking on with envious eyes, had exclaimed in a piteous voice, “I wish I were a girl.” [1] “It was indeed a triumph,” says Miss Whately, “to the little school that it caused an Egyptian boy even for a moment to wish himself a girl.”  Other boys had expressed their desire to come to school; so, as the ‘girls’ school did not meet on Sundays, Miss Whately started a Sunday class for boys.  This was all it was possible for her to do by herself.  But just at that time she became acquainted with one who, with other members of his family, was henceforth to be closely associated With all her work in Egypt.  This was Mansoor Shakoor, a young Christian Syrian of good family and education, who, after working for some years as teacher and evangelist in Syria, had become agent in Cairo for the Moslem Mission Society, recently established in England.  First of all Yousif Shakoor, brother of Mansoor, came to help her in work.[2] Later Mansoor also entered her employ, and she maintained both the brothers from her private resources.  Thus she was provided with devoted and efficient helpers.  Under their superintendence a regular school for boys was established, and when in 1863 she again returned to England she left the charge of all her work in their hands.  On the 8th of October in that year Archbishop Whately died, and Mary Whately’s Irish home being broken up, she determined henceforth to fix her permanent abode in Cairo.  She now hired another house near to her own residence for the accommodation of the increasing schools.

[Footnote 1:  Ragged Life in Egypt, new ed., p. 167.] [Footnote 2:  Life of Mansoor Shakoor, pp. 58, 59.]

Very few English people can stand the intense heat of the Egyptian summer, and Mary Whately being disinclined in 1864 to come so far as to England, spent a short time instead in Syria.  When she returned to Cairo she took with her to educate and train Fereedy Naseef, the young cousin and betrothed of Mansoor Shakoor.  For this young girl there sprang up in Mary Whately’s heart a deep and warm affection; she called her and treated her as her daughter, and both before and after her marriage in the summer of 1868 she resided under Miss Whately’s roof.  When in 1872 her husband died, she still remained, and Miss Whately shared with her the care and training of her young son and daughter, while she in return gave great assistance in the conduct and work of the mission.

IV.

MISSION WORK IN CAIRO AND ON THE NILE.

Is it possible to convert Moslems to Christianity? are they ready to receive it?  No one perhaps is more competent to answer these questions than Mary Whately, and this is what she says:  “To say, as has been sometimes rashly declared, that the Moslems are ready to receive Christianity, and that the faith of the false prophet is crumbling away, is what I would not venture for a moment to assert.  But I can state as a fact, that in the neighbourhood of Cairo the peasant population both men and women, are willing, and many of them eager to listen to the Word of God when it is brought before them judiciously and discreetly, as well as with kindness and zeal.” [1]