He bestowed on us a cool smile of triumph, and then removed his hat. His hair had been given a shellac finish and smelled like the front doorway of a drug store.
"Signor Mosquito is well named," said Mr. Peasley. "When he got through with me he stung me for fifteen piastres."
For several hours we refused to speak to him or sit near him on deck, but finally we needed him to fill out a four-handed game of dominoes and he was taken back on probation. While we were engaged in a very stubborn session of "double nines," we noticed that most of our fellow passengers, and especially those of English persuasion, were making our little group the target for horrified glances. Some of them actually glared at us. We began to wonder if dominoes was regarded as an immoral practice in Egypt.
"These people keep on looking at us as if we were a happy band of burglars," said Mr. Peasley. "We think we are travelling incog., but our reputation has preceded us."
Then we heard one old lady ask another if there would be any evening services in the dining saloon, and Mr. Peasley, who was reaching into the "bone yard," suddenly paused with his hand up and exclaimed:—"Sanctified catfish! Boys, it's Sunday!"
"Boys, it's Sunday!"
It was. We had been sitting there among those nice people throughout the calm Sabbath afternoon playing a wicked game of chance. After two weeks among the Mohammedans and other heathen, with every day a working day and the English Sunday a dead letter, we had lost all trace of dates. Mr. Peasley said that if anyone had asked him the day of the week he would have guessed Wednesday.
This unfortunate incident helped to deepen and solidify the dark suspicion with which we, as Americans, were regarded by the contingent from Great Britain. If our conduct had been exemplary we could not have cleared away this suspicion, but after the domino debauch we were set down as hopeless. The middle class English guard their social status very carefully, and you can't blame them. It is a tender and uncertain growth that requires looking after all the time. If they didn't water it and prune it and set it out in the sunshine every day it would soon wither back to its original stalk.