"What will you do till I come back?"
"Rest. Perhaps I shall read, and I'll talk to Ibrahim. He always amuses me."
"Good. I'm going to ride the donkey and take Hamza."
Just as he was mounting, he turned round, and said:
"Ruby, I'm having my time now. You shall have yours. You shall have the best dahabeeyah to be got on the Nile, the Loulia, if Baroudi will hire it out to us."
"Oh, the Loulia would cost us too much," she said, "even if it could be hired."
"We'll get a good one, anyhow, and you shall see every temple—go up to Halfa, if you want to. And now pray for duck with all your might."
He rode away down the sand slope towards the lake, and presently, with Hamza and the native guide, was but a moving speck in the pallid distance.
Mrs. Armine watched them from a folding chair, which she made Ibrahim carry out into the sand some hundreds of yards from the camp.
"Leave me here for a little while, Ibrahim," she said.