CHAPTER XXI

And the first day was like unto the second and the third, for these two desert farers went but slowly.

Each dawn, if they had travelled in the night, they found their tents pitched; each night they moved on, or not, as pleased the girl’s mood, each hour of the day strengthening the love in the man’s soul, each minute of the night passing over him, as he lay outside the entrance to her tent, so that, at the slightest sound from the dim, sweet, scented interior, he might spring to his feet, awaiting the little call for help which never came.  Jill slept as peacefully as a babe, stirring only at a dreamed of, or imagined, swaying of the bed, as does the seafarer sometimes who sleeps for the first time after many months upon a bed, the four feet of which stand firmly on the ground.

During the waking moments after her first night’s rest, uninitiated Jill had in imagination gone through and ardently disliked the frightful hour in which she would help collect, and clean, and pack a litter of soiled pots and pans, and other such abominations, which collecting, etc., seems to constitute one of the chief charms of a Western picnic; so great had been her relief on hearing that there was absolutely nothing to do but to see that the cushions and coffee were safely strapped upon Howesha’s back, the only patient part of the animal.  They were standing in front of the tents with the animals at their feet, the man watching the girl’s every movement.  Jill herself, being vastly rested, was absolutely radiant as to looks; strange dishes and hot winds and cold causing no havoc to the skin, nor the lack of Marcel methods unsightliness to her hair.

The dusk hid the dilapidation of her tailor-made, which looked the fresher for being pressed under the mattress; she always travelled boot-trees, so her shoes were all right, and the two Jacob’s ladders, falling on the outside of her stockings, looked just like clocks neatly mended; her lovely hair rioted under her blue hat, and her high spirits rioted in her blue eyes, as she fed the camels with dates and wiped her sticky fingers on the silken coats.

“What!” she had exclaimed.  “You don’t mean to say that you are going to leave all this for the first thief to collect,” withdrawing as she spoke her basket of dates from the vicinity of her new camel’s mouth.

Verily, a beast of great beauty and worth was she, but shining as a mere rushlight, in comparison to the Bleriot head-light radiance of the fallen Taffadaln.

“The Arab does not steal!”

“Oh! but------” said Jill, putting a date into her own mouth by
mistake, and therefore speaking with difficulty, “but they do steal,
and murder, and do all kinds of dreadful things like that—­I learnt
it all in school!”

“No,” reiterated the man calmly, “the Arab does not steal, he merely carries out the order of Allah, who, when Abraham turned his son Ishmael from his door, gave unto the boy the open plains and deserts as a heritage, permitting him to take and make use of whatever he could find therein.