“We have made it our strictest rule, Jane. Europeans only!”
“We have, Amelia, and Maria Oporto, the dull little Portuguese, is almost as swarthy and dense as the new scullery-maid who is a mixture of Arab and Abyssinian!” had countered Jane, who kept the books and knew to a piastre what the new wing, with the gymnasium, was going to cost.
“We may lose our entire connexion if we break it, Jane.”
“Not if we emphasize the title of her maternal grandfather. Remember, he was a Spanish nobleman. Besides, look at the terms offered. No interference from the father, who is evidently a person of great position in Arabia, fees for two years which will come to as much, if not more, than the fees for all the pupils put together for three years, and extra for holidays if we will keep her with us.”
“Of course, we might make enough to buy a cottage in Cornwall and retire, if we took the plunge, Jane.”
“We might, if you think we could exchange this for east winds and grey skies.”
They had both turned and looked out through the open window to the intense blueness of the sky, the glare of the sun, and the green of the palms tossing in the light breeze.
The school stood in the European quarter, within a stone’s throw of the Midan where the young ladies, whose parents could afford the extra course in riding, exercised and worried their riding master’s patience and their mounts to fiddle-strings before breakfast twice a week.
All the joyous or irritating noises, according to your mood, of a big Egyptian city had come to the spinsters’ ears as they had sat, uncertain, weighing the pros and cons of the problem.