I wish the English could know how unpleasant and mischievous their manner of talking to their servants about religion is.  Omar confided to me how bad it felt to be questioned, and then to see the Englishman laugh or put up his lip and say nothing.  ’I don’t want to talk about his religion at all, but if he talks about mine he ought to speak of his own, too.  You, my Lady, say, when I tell you things, that is the same with us, or that is different, or good, or not good in your mind, and that is the proper way, not to look like thinking “all nonsense."’

ESNEH,
Saturday, April 30.

On Thursday evening as I was dreamily sitting on my divan, who should walk in but Arthur Taylor, on his way, all alone in a big dahabieh, to Edfou.  So I offered to go too, whereupon he said he would go on to Assouan and see Philae as he had company, and we went off to Mustapha to make a bargain with his Reis for it; thus then here we are at Esneh.  I embarked on Wednesday evening, and we have been two days en route.  Yesterday we had the thermometer at 110; I was the only person awake all day in the boat.  Omar, after cooking, lay panting at my feet on the deck.  Arthur went fairly to bed in the cabin; ditto Sally.  All the crew slept on the deck.  Omar cooked amphibiously, bathing between every meal.  The silence of noon with the white heat glowing on the river which flowed like liquid tin, and the silent Nubian rough boats floating down without a ripple, was magnificent and really awful.  Not a breath of wind as we lay under the lofty bank.  The Nile is not quite so low, and I see a very different scene from last year.  People think us crazy to go up to Assouan in May, but I do enjoy it, and I really wanted to forget all the sickness and sorrow in which I have taken part.  When I went to Mustapha’s he said Sheykh Yussuf was ill, and I said ‘Then I won’t go.’  But Yussuf came in with a sick headache only.  Mustapha repeated my words to him, and never did I see such a lovely expression in a human face as that with which Yussuf said Eh, ya Sitt!  Mustapha laughed, and told him to thank me, and Yussuf turned to me and said, in a low voice, ’my sister does not need thanks, save from God.’  Fancy a Shereef, one of the Ulema, calling a Frengeeyeh ‘sister’!  His pretty little girl came in and played with me, and he offered her to me for Maurice.  I cured Kursheed’s Abyssinian slave-girl.  You would have laughed to see him obeying my directions, and wiping his eyes on his gold-embroidered sleeve.  And then the Coptic priest came for me for his wife who was ill.  He was in a great quandary, because, if she died, he, as a priest, could never marry again, as he loudly lamented before her; but he was truly grieved, and I was very happy to leave her convalescent.