"It isn't that I'm afraid——"
"I know! It's because of your loyalty to me. But if I send you, Babe, you needn't mind. It will be for my sake."
"Hadda is waiting for an answer," Noura hinted.
"My sister will go. Is the woman ready to take her?"
"I will find out, lady."
In a moment the negress came back. "Hadda will lead the Little Rose to her mistress. She is glad that it is to be now, and not later."
"Be very careful what you say, and forget nothing that she says," was Saidee's last advice. And it sounded very Eastern to Victoria.
She hated her errand, but undertook it without further protest, since it was for Saidee's sake.
Hadda was old and ugly. She and Noura had been born in the quarter of the freed Negroes, in the village across the river, and knew nothing of any world beyond; yet all the wiliness and wisdom of female things, since Eve—woman, cat and snake—glittered under their slanting eyelids.
Victoria had not been out of her sister's rooms and garden, except to visit M'Barka in the women's guest-house, since the night when Maïeddine brought her to the Zaouïa; and when she had time to think of her bodily needs, she realized that she longed desperately for exercise. Physically it was a relief to walk even the short distance between Saidee's house and Miluda's; but her cheeks tingled with some emotion she could hardly understand when she saw that the Ouled Naïl's garden-court was larger and more beautiful than Saidee's.