"Should you not like to read and write?"
"Teaching is only meant for men. They have got to read the Koran, but it is all ugly letters; I won't learn to read."
"You don't know how nice it is to read stories, and all about different countries. Ah! I wish I was in the schoolroom, at home, and I would show you how pleasant it is."
And Lucy seemed to have her wish all at once, for she and Amina stood in her own schoolroom, but with no one else there. The first thing Amina did was to scream, "Oh, what shocking windows! even men can see in; shut them up." She rolled herself up in her veil, and Lucy could only satisfy her by pulling down all the blinds, after which she ventured to look about a little. "What have you to sit on?" she asked, with great disgust.
"Chairs and stools," said Lucy, laughing and showing them.
"These little tables with four legs! How can you sit on them?"
Lucy sat down and showed her. "That is not sitting," she said, and tried to curl herself up cross-legged; "I can't dangle down my legs."
"Our governess always makes us write out a tense of a French verb if she sees us sitting with our legs crossed," said Lucy, laughing with much amusement at Amina's attempts to wriggle herself up on the stool whence she nearly fell.
"Ah, I will never have a governess!" cried Amina. "I will cry, and cry, and give Selim Bey no rest till he promises to let me alone. What a dreadful place this is! Where can you sleep?"
"In bed, to be sure" said Lucy.