e seemed difficult to explain. The
goats appeared to live on bits of paper and scraps of orange peel, while
the cows, dogs, and cats which with the goats wandered restlessly about
the streets fared even worse. As for the camels and donkeys, they stood
about in groups, or lay in the sand with their usual expression of bored
resignation.

Vernon Keith laughed at Katrine's undisguised dismay.

"Don't judge the East by Port Said, Miss Beverley! It is a nightmare of
a hole, where no one lives who is not absolutely compelled. Even these
Arab coal-porter fellows bring their families here for two or three
months, work like the devil, and then disappear into the desert to live
like fighting cocks until their earnings are finished... Here's a water
hydrant,--suppose we stand here and watch the people fill their skins!
It may give you a laugh, and that's a difficult thing to achieve in this
part of the world."

Katrine looked around eagerly. A group of Europeans had already
gathered round the hydrant, some of whom she recognised as passengers on
her own boat; the others were strangers, for whom at the moment she had
no attention to spare. An Arab woman was holding to the tap a crumpled
mass of skin, into which the water was gradually falling. Even as she
watched, the folded mass swelled and wriggled in life-like contortions.
The crowd broke into laughter; the Arab woman, expectant of backsheesh,
responded with a gleaming smile. Katrine danced on her toes like an
excited child.

"What is it? What is it? A pig-skin? A calf-skin? A sloper? It's
_just_ like a dying sloper! What can it be?"

Suddenly from out the sausage-like round shot a leg, kicking, as it
were, into space; a second leg, more legs, a tail--then the Arab woman
gave an adroit twist to the balloon, and a final shriek of laughter from
the crowd greeted the cocking of frisky ears, above the life-like head!

The sight was so irresistibly comic, that even Vernon Keith was
surprised into a smile, which broadened at sight of Katrine's childlike
delight. The clear treble of her laughter, the involuntary dance of her
eager feet, the beauty of the sparkling face, made her indeed the
cynosure of every eye. Fellow-passengers smiled at her with a
kindliness which had in it an element of remorse. "The girl who walked
about with that horrible man"--appeared suddenly in a different light,--
not an adventuress after all, but a girl whose experience of life was