"P.S.—Forgot to say Ishmael Ameer is to go up to Cairo shortly, so you'll soon see him for yourself. But Heaven help me! what is to become of Gordon Lord when you've once looked on this son of the wilderness?
"P.P.S.—Not an arrest since yesterday!"
CHAPTER XVI
"GENERAL'S HOUSE,
"CITADEL, CAIRO.
"MY DEAR GORDON,—You're in for it! In that whispering gallery which people call the East, where everything is known before it happens to happen, rumours without end were coming to Cairo of what you were doing in Alexandria, but nobody in authority believed the half of it until your letters arrived at noon to-day, and now—heigho, for the wind and the rain!
"My dear Dad is going about like an old Tom with his tail up, and as for the Consul-General ... whew! (a whistle, your Excellency).
"Let me take things in their order, though, so that you may see what has come to pass. I was reading your letter for the third (or was it the thirtieth?) time this afternoon when who should come in but the Princess Nazimah, so I couldn't resist an impulse to tell her what your son of Hagar had to say on the position of Eastern women, thinking it would gratify her and she would agree. But no, not a bit of it; off she went on the other side, with talk straight out of the harem, showing that the woman of the East isn't worthy of emancipation and shouldn't get it—yet.
"It seems that if the men of the East are 'beasts' the women are 'creatures.' Love? They never heard of such a thing. Husband? The word doesn't exist for them. Not 'my Master' even! Just 'Master'! Living together like school-girls and loving each other like sisters—think of that, my dear!
"And when I urged that we were all taught to love one another—all Christians, at all events—she cried, 'What! and share one man between four of you?' In short, the condition was only possible to cocks and hens, and that Eastern women could put up with it showed they were creatures—simple creatures, content and happy if their husbands (beg pardon, their Masters) gave them equal presents of dresses and jewels and Turkish delight. No, let the woman of the East keep a little longer to her harem window, her closed carriage, and the wisp of mousseline de soie she calls her veil, or she'll misuse her liberty. 'Oh, I know! I say what I think! I don't care!'