A favorite occupation was the making of gardens; and then there was a hunt for the prettiest mosses, the tiniest, brightest pebbles and the most tree-like twigs. Then a place was marked out on the side of the smooth sandy path and usually near a bench where would be sitting our bonnes or whoever was taking care of us. Paths were traced and bordered with the pebbles; smooth lawns made of the velvety moss, and small branches stuck in for trees; while miniature flower-beds were made and filled with the smallest flowers to be found.
These gardens were often very pretty and much ingenuity could be displayed in laying them out. We sometimes made them in some secluded spot hoping to find them again the next day; but we never did, for Paris is the neatest city in the world and the Bois de Boulogne receives its share of cleaning and garnishing every day in the year.
There is nothing "snubby" or ungracious about French children, and I remember how many a time we helped poor peasant children pick up stray bits of wood to make their fagots, or invited them to share our fun.
One day we saw a crowd of these children carrying baskets filled with acacia-blossoms which they said were to be made into fritters!
We found that a large acacia-tree, laden with the snowy fragrant clusters, had been cut down and the people were plucking as much of the booty as they could carry away with them. We followed their example and that evening we had the addition of some delicious fritters to our dinner. The grape-like clusters had been dipped into a light batter, fried and sprinkled with sugar; truly they made a dish fit for a king.
Happy hours were those spent in the dear old Bois de Boulogne and if any of you girls and boys who read this ever go there, may you have as happy ones!
VII.
AN ARAB DINNER-PARTY.
ONE hot day towards the close of April, when the air fairly danced between the red sun and the reflected glare of the sand, our dahabeeah, the Lohengrin, was drifting with the current down the Negadeh reach of the Nile, in Upper Egypt. On each shore a rampart of bleak desert hills reared their craggy fronts, pouring from their gorges deep wind-silted shoots of sand which here and there swept over the narrow river-margin of fertile field and date grove. Few were the villages that we passed, and those that could be seen nestled under their canopy of palms, as if seeking refuge from the fierce sun. Their dusty streets appeared untenanted save for the ever-wheeling flights of pigeons, and the inevitable dogs, and everything had shunned the track of the chariot of the Egyptian sun-god, Ra. Everything but the birds, which—glorying in the heat of the noontide—were abroad on their bright eastern wings in endless numbers by "field and flood." Indeed many of the mud-flats, left in mid-stream by the subsidence of the waters, seemed alive with the noise and movement of feathered habitants, chattering in a thousand different tones—pompous old pelicans snapping their absurd bills in contemptuous disapproval of some silly water-gull's proposition; tall storks and cranes spoiling their dignity of blue-plumed head and neck by standing on one leg with the superfluous one tucked carefully out of the way; surly vultures fanning their wings in the hot sun, and stretching their ugly heads in gorged laziness; ragged kites swooping amongst a motley crowd of ravens; quarreling hawks and eagles, fastidious siksaks, terns, and coots running backwards and forwards over the dry mud, and wondering at the calm of ducks and geese who preferred standing stationary in the shallows, whence they in their turn could quack scorn of the spasmodic energy of the terns and their frantic brethren.