And she laughed a delicious little laugh, of pure glee as she replaced the garments on the chair, and slithering hither and thither in her unaccustomed footgear, tidied the tent and made her bed, regarding ruthfully the torn mosquito curtain.

“Oh, for a maid,” she sighed, as she wrestled with the mattress, and “Oh, for dear Babette,” she sighed again, as she wrestled with the masses of her hair.

And the tent was filled with a blaze of light, as, wrapped in her bath-gown, she stood in front of the steel mirror, plaiting and unplaiting, twisting and pinning her hair, until with an exclamation of impatience she let it all down, holding great strands out at arm’s length, through which she passed the comb again and again, until the red-gold mass shone, and curled, and rippled about her like a cloak of satin.

It is hopeless to try and describe the shining, waving masses which curled round her knees, and fluttered in tendrils round her face, and it would have been hard to find anything anywhere so beautiful as Jill when, clad in the loose silk garment and soft satin wrapper, with her perfumed hair swirling about her, she stood entranced at the opening of her tent, until the sun suddenly disappearing left her in darkness, whereupon she clapped her hands quickly.

CHAPTER XX

Jill had finished the first of many evening meals she was to partake of in the desert, and was lying on a heap of cushions listening to the clink of brass coffee utensils and porcelain cups, whilst sniffing appreciatively the aroma of Eastern coffee Easternly made, which is totally different to that which permeates the dim recesses draped with tinselled dusty hangings, and cluttered with Eastern stools and tables inlaid with mother o’ pearl made in Birmingham, in the ubiquitous Oriental Cafe at which we meet the rest of us at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning at the seaside; nor does it resemble in the slightest that which is oilily poured forth in London town by the fat, oily, so-called “Son of the Crescent” who, wearing fez and baggy trousers, in some caravanserai West, Sou’-west or Nor’-west, has unfailingly been chief coffee-maker to the late Sultan, vide anyway the hotel advertisements.

She was smiling as she lay stretched full length with her chin in her palms, thinking of the meal just eaten.  Whilst waiting for it she had imagined a mess of pottage perhaps, or stewed kid as piece de resistance, with honey or manna as sweets, and a savoury of fried locusts, which she, with many others, imagined to be the all-devouring insect.  She knew by now, and returned thanks, that the man neither ate with his mouth open nor gave precedence to his fingers and teeth over knives and forks, but in her wildest dreams she had never imagined that such exquisite things, served in such an exquisite way, could be laid before her in a desert.