'It is my purpose to make a little tour to visit missionary ladies at three several places in these mountains, and then to go on to Jezzîn to see the waterfall. As you appear to know the country and the people intimately, and can speak the language, it would be well if you came too. The man Rashîd could wait upon us all.'
Rashîd, I knew, was listening at the door.
'Us all? How many of you are there, then?'
He hemmed a moment ere replying:
'I—er—think of taking the Miss Karams with me'—Miss Sara Karam, a young lady of Syrian birth but English education, was head teacher at the girls' school, and her younger sister, Miss Habîbah Karam, was her constant visitor—'I thought you might take charge of the younger of the two. The trip will give them both great pleasure, I am sure.'
And they were going to Jezzîn, where there was no hotel, and we should have to herd together in the village guest-room! What would my Arab friends, censorious in all such matters, think of that?
I told him plainly what I thought of the idea, and what the mountain-folk would think of it and all of us. I told him that I had no wish to ruin any woman's reputation, nor to be forced into unhappy marriage by a public scandal. He, as a visitor, would go away again; as an old man, and professionally holy, his good name could hardly suffer among English people. But the girls would have to live among the mountaineers, who, knowing of their escapade, would thenceforth scorn them. And as for me——
'But I proposed a mere excursion,' he interpolated. 'I fail to see why you should take this tone about it.'
'Well, I have told you what I think,' was my rejoinder. I then went out and told the story to Rashîd, who heartily applauded my decision, which he had already gathered.
I did not see our simple friend again till after breakfast the next morning. Then he said to me, in something of a contrite tone: