Each rosy countenance was rippled with laughter, but the sound was lost in the great turmoil about them.  In the center of the group, a pair of hands put forth under the chin of an older girl, held the ends of the garland with a determined grip.  Her eyes were gray, her hair was chestnut, her face very fair.  Kenkenes recognized her with a sudden warmth about his heart.  The others were strangers to him.  A glance at the plate on the side of the boat showed him that this was the one he sought.  Most willingly he obeyed the insistent summons of the garland and permitted himself to be drawn to the barge.  There, the same hands showed him the ladder against the side, and a dozen pretty arms were extended to haul him aboard as he climbed.

But the instant he planted foot on the deck the lovely rout retreated to shelter at the side of a smiling woman seated in the shadow of fans.  Only his fair-faced captor stood her ground.

“Hail, Hapi,” [1] she cried, doing obeisance.  “Pity the desert.”  She flung wide her hands.  With the exception of the youths at the oars there was no other man on the boat.

“Ye may call me forth,” Kenkenes replied, “but how shall ye return me to my banks?  Hither, sweet On,” he continued, catching the hand of the fair-faced girl, “submit first to submergence.”  She took his kisses willingly.  “This for Seti, thy lover; this for Hotep, thy brother, and this for me who am both in one.  How thou art grown, Io!”

“But she hath not denied thee the babyhood privileges for all that, Kenkenes,” the smiling woman said.

“It is an excellent example of submission she hath set, Lady Senci,” he replied, advancing toward the young girls about her.  “Let us see if it prevail.”

But the troop scattered with little cries of dismay.

“Nay,” he observed, as he bent over Senci’s hand, “never were two maids alike, and I shall not strive to make them so.”

“Thy father hath most graciously kept his word in sending us a protector,” Senci continued, “My nosegay of beauties drooped last night when they arrived from On with my brother sick, aboard.  They feared they must stop with me in Memphis for want of a man.”

“It was the first word I heard from my father this morning and the last when I left him even now:  ’Io’s father hath failed her through sickness, so do thou look after the Lady Senci—­and the gods give thee grace for once to do a thing well!’”

The lady smiled and patted his arm.  “He did not fear; he knew whom he chose.  But behold our gallant escort—­the nomarch ahead, beside us the new cup-bearer and behind us all the rank of the north.”

“Aye, and when we cast off thou mayest look for the new murket on thy right.”

The lady blushed.  “I have not seen thy father yet, this morning.”

“So?  His robes must fit poorly.”

At that moment a gang-plank was run across from the broad flat stern of the nomarch’s boat to the prow of Senci’s, a carpet was spread on it, and Ta-meri, with little shrieks and tottering steps, came across it.  Kenkenes put out his arms to her and lifted her down when she arrived.