women, though they profess huge admiration and pay personal compliments, which an Arab very seldom attempts.  I heard Seleem Effendi and Omar discussing English ladies one day lately while I was inside the curtain with Seleem’s slave girl, and they did not know I heard them.  Omar described Janet, and was of the opinion that a man who was married to her could want nothing more.  ’By my soul, she rides like a Bedawee, she shoots with the gun and pistol, and rows the boat; she speaks many languages, works with the needle like an Efreet, and to see her hands run over the teeth of the music-box (keys of piano) amazes the mind, while her singing gladdens the soul.  How then should her husband ever desire the coffee-shop? Wallahy! she can always amuse him at home.  And as to my lady, the thing is not that she does not know.  When I feel my stomach tightened, I go to the divan and say to her, ’Do you want anything, a pipe, or sherbet, or so and so?’ and I talk till she lays down her book and talks to me, and I question her and amuse my mind, and, by God! if I were a rich man and could marry one English Hareem like that I would stand before her and serve her like her memlook.  You see I am only this lady’s servant, and I have not once sat in the coffee-shop because of the sweetness of her tongue.  Is it not therefore true that the man who can marry such Hareem is rich more than with money?’ Seleem seemed disposed to think a little more of looks, though he quite agreed with all Omar’s enthusiasm, and asked if Janet were beautiful.  Omar answered with decorous vagueness that she was a ‘moon,’ but declined mentioning her hair, eyes, etc. (it is a liberty to describe a woman minutely).  I nearly laughed out at hearing Omar relate his manoeuvres to make me ‘amuse his mind’; it seems I am in no danger of being discharged for being dull.

The weather has set in so hot that I have shifted my quarters out of my fine room to the south-west into one with only three sides looking over a lovely green view to the north-east, with a huge sort of solid veranda, as large as the room itself, on the open side; thus I live in the open air altogether.  The bats and the swallows are quite sociable; I hope the serpents and scorpions will be more reserved. ‘El Khamaseen’ (the fifty) has begun, and the wind is enough to mix up heaven and earth, but it is not distressing like the Cape south-easter, and, though hot, not choking like the Khamseen in Cairo and Alexandria.  Mohammed brought me a handful of the new wheat just now.  Think of harvest in March and April!  These winds are as good for the crops here as a ‘nice steady rain’ is in England.  It is not necessary to water so much when the wind blows strong.  As I rode through the green fields along the dyke, a little boy sang as he turned round on the musically-creaking Sakiah (the water-wheel turned by an ox) the one eternal Sakiah tune—­the words are ad libitum, and my little friend chanted ’Turn oh Sakiah to the right and turn to the left—­who will take care of me if my father dies?  Turn oh Sakiah, etc., pour water for the figs and the grass and for the watermelons.  Turn oh Sakiah!’ Nothing is so pathetic as that Sakiah song.