"I find," he said, and hurried back the way they had come.
Mustapha turned around to see what was the matter, and waved his arms wildly and jabbered out a string of words when George told him what had happened.
"What do you suppose they will do to me, Uncle Ben," laughed George, "put me in prison? It is not my fault the old slipper came off, it's as big as a boat anyhow."
"I know what would have happened not so very many years ago," answered his uncle. "We should probably all have been mobbed, if not killed, for it is only of recent years that people who are not Mohammedans have been allowed to come inside the mosques at all. There is nothing which shows the character and habits of the natives of Cairo better than by observing how their religion enters into their daily lives."
"It's a regular 'hunt the slipper game,'" said George, as he watched the little Egyptian looking carefully over the rugs.
Suddenly Nabul came running back with something in his clothes.
"Quick, I put him on," he whispered, slipping the missing babouche on George's foot, at the same time glancing around to see that no one was looking. No one was looking, and nothing happened, though George wondered if that would have been the case if he had been found with only one slipper.
At the door they dropped the babouches for good, and outside found Abdal playing games with some boys, and the donkeys fast asleep. They were soon waked up, and our party cantered back to the hotel for lunch, for as George said, "It's funny how seeing things makes you so hungry."
Mustapha told the boys to be back at two o'clock with their donkeys, but just now they were cantering off for their own midday meal. Nabul was in such high spirits that he must stop and buy some hot fried peppers and a pile of sticky sweet cakes from the man who sat under a big red umbrella frying big red and green peppers in a pan of olive oil which stood on a small brazier of charcoal. It is the custom for the sellers of vegetables and cakes to cook them in the open air in order to attract trade by the odours and sweet smell of the cooking.