I went a few days ago to the wedding of handsome Sheykh Hassan the Abab’deh, who married the butcher’s pretty little daughter.  The group of women and girls lighted by the lantern which little Achmet carried up for me was the most striking thing I have seen.  The bride—­a lovely girl of ten or eleven all in scarlet, a tall dark slave of Hassan’s blazing with gold and silver necklaces and bracelets, with long twisted locks of coal black hair and such glittering eyes and teeth, the wonderful wrinkled old women, and the pretty, wondering, yet fearless children were beyond description.  The mother brought the bride up to me and unveiled her and asked me to let her kiss my hand, and to look at her, I said all the usual Bismillah Mashallah’s, and after a time went to the men who were eating, all but Hassan who sat apart and who begged me to sit by him, and whispered anxious enquiries about his aroosah’s looks.  After a time he went to visit her and returned in half an hour very shy and covering his face and hand and kissed the hands of the chief guests.  Then we all departed and the girl was taken to look at the Nile, and then to her husband’s house.  Last night he gave me a dinner—­a very good dinner indeed, in his house which is equal to a very poor cattle shed at home.  We were only five.  Sheykh Yussuf, Omar, an elderly merchant and I. Hassan wanted to serve us but I made him sit.

The merchant, a well-bred man of the world who has enjoyed life and married wives everywhere—­had arrived that day and found a daughter of his dead here.  He said he felt very miserable—­and everyone told him not to mind and consoled him oddly enough to English ideas.  Then people told stories.  Omar’s was a good version of the man and wife who would not shut the door and agreed that the first to speak should do it—­very funny indeed.  Yussuf told a pretty tale of a Sultan who married a Bint el-Arab (daughter of the Bedawee) and how she would not live in his palace, and said she was no fellaha to dwell in houses, and scorned his silk clothes and sheep killed for her daily, and made him live in the desert with her.  A black slave told a prosy tale about thieves—­and the rest were more long than pointed.

Hassan’s Arab feelings were hurt at the small quantity of meat set before me. (They can’t kill a sheep now for an honoured guest.) But I told him no greater honour could be paid to us English than to let us eat lentils and onions like one of the family, so that we might not feel as strangers among them—­which delighted all the party.  After a time the merchant told us his heart was somewhat dilated—­as a man might say his toothache had abated—­and we said ‘Praise be to God’ all round.

A short time ago my poor friend the Maohn had a terrible ‘tile’ fall on his head.  His wife, two married daughters and nine miscellaneous children arrived on a sudden, and the poor man is now tasting the pleasures which Abraham once endured between Sarah and Hagar.  I visited the ladies and found a very ancient Sarah and a daughter of wonderful beauty.  A young man here—­a Shereef—­has asked me to open negotiations for a marriage for him with the Maohn’s grand daughter a little girl of eight—­so you see how completely I am ‘one of the family.’