“Yes,” Chebron answered sleepily, “I am awake; thanks to your talking. If you had lain quiet we might have slept for another hour yet.”
“You have had plenty of sleep the last twenty-four hours,” Amuba retorted. “Take a cloth and let us land and run along the banks for a mile, and have a bath before the boat comes along.”
“It is very cold for it,” Chebron said.
“Nonsense! the water will refresh you.”
“Come along, Chefu,” Jethro said, “your brother is right; a dip will refresh us for the day.”
The Egyptians were most particular about bathing and washing. The heat and dust of the climate rendered cleanliness an absolute necessity, and all classes took their daily bath—the wealthy in baths attached to their houses, the poor in the water of the lakes or canals. Jethro and the two lads leaped ashore and ran briskly along the bank for about a mile, stripped and took a plunge into the river, and were dressed again just as the boat came along with the four men towing her, and the captain steering with an oar at the stern. It was light enough now for him to distinguish the faces of his passengers, and he brought the boat straight alongside the bank. In a few minutes the girls came out from their cabin, looking fresh and rosy.
“So you have been bathing?” Mysa said. “We heard what you were saying, and we have had our bath too.”
“How did you manage that?” Chebron asked.
“We went out by the door at the other side of our cabin in our woollen robes, on to that little platform on which the man is standing to steer, and poured jars of water over each other.”
“And you both slept well?”