The camel stopped at length and turned back again, sawing the air. He stopped at length at the mat. Dinah’s face grew happy again, and she laughed with the crowd.
THE EGYPTIAN DONKEY BOYS, MOUNTED.
“Ben,” she said, “didn’t I ride like a queen?”
She added, “How am I ever to get down way up here in de air?”
Dinah surveyed the great crowd. There was an acre more or less of people, with mouths stretched from ear to ear. It was not a provoking merriment, not sarcastic, nor that mean mirth that ridicules weakness. It was all sympathetic, good hearted, and good natured.
The camel driver gave another queer sound, somewhat like that at the beginning of the ride.
Dinah’s question as to how she was to get down was suddenly answered, and without any ceremony.
The camel seemed in an instant to collapse, and fall down all in a heap.
When Dinah found the high-backed animal falling as it were all to pieces into a heap of bones, her eyes turned white. But she was landed safely. The camel lay under her as if dead. She stepped from the saddle. The crowd began to cheer. Poor Dinah at first did not know whether to be offended or delighted. She seized the arm of Ben, and looked around her. The crowd was laughing in such a generous-hearted way that she wisely thought it best to join in.