My little Achmet grows more pressing with me to take him.  I will take him to Alexandria, I think, and leave him in Janet’s house to learn more house service.  He is a dear little boy and very useful.  I don’t suppose his brother will object and he has no parents.  Achmet ibn-Mustapha also coaxes me to take him with me to Alexandria, and to try again to persuade his father to send him to England to Mr. Fowler.  I wish most heartily I could.  He is an uncommon child in every way, full of ardour to learn and do something, and yet childish and winning and full of fun.  His pretty brown face is quite a pleasure to me.  His remarks on the New Testament teach me as many things as I can teach him.  The boy is pious and not at all ill taught, he is much pleased to find so little difference between the teaching of the Koran and the Aangeel.  He wanted me, in case Omar did not go with me, to take him to serve me.  Here there is no idea of its being derogatory for a gentleman’s son to wait on one who teaches him, it is positively incumbent.  He does all ‘menial offices’ for his mother, hands coffee, waits at table or helps Omar in anything if I have company, nor will he eat or smoke before me, or sit till I tell him—­it is like service in the middle ages.

April 3, 1865:  Mrs. Ross

To Mrs. Ross.  LUXOR, April 3, 1865.

Dearest Janet,

The weather has set in so horrid, as to dust, that I shall be glad to get away as soon as I can.  If you have bought a dahabieh for me of course I will await its arrival.  If not I will have two small boats from Keneh, whereby I shall avoid sticking in this very low water.  Sheykh Hassan goes down in his boat in twenty days and urges me to travel under his escort, as of course the poor devils who are ‘out on their keeping’ after the Gau business have no means of living left but robbery, and Sheykh Hassan’s party is good for seven or eight guns.  You will laugh at my listening to such a cowardly proposition (on my part) but my friends here are rather bent upon it, and Hassan is a capital fellow.  If therefore the dahabieh is in rerum naturae and can start at once, well and good.

April 14.—­The dahabieh sounds an excellent bargain to me and good for you also to get your people to Assouan first.  Many thanks for the arrangement.

Your version of our massacre is quite curious to us here.  I know very intimately the Sheykh-el-Arab who helped to catch the poor people and also a young Turk who stood by while Fadil Pasha had the men laid down by ten at a time and chopped with pioneers’ axes.  My Turkish friend (a very good-humoured young fellow) quite admired the affair and expressed a desire to do likewise to all the fellaheen in Egypt.  I have seen with my own eyes a second boatload of prisoners.  I wish to God the Pasha knew the deep exasperation which his subordinates are causing.