nes was so valuable for the saint that Michael's
silent consent to her presence had been given. Again he was drifting.

"Let us return to where we left off yesterday," referred to her
suggestion of the evening before that they should tell each other of
the most English thing they could imagine, things seen in England as in
comparison to things seen in Egypt.

It was a typically Eastern scene which lay before them--the yellow
sands of the Arabian desert, the dark palm-trees and the picturesque
Bedouins idling under the shelter of the palms. Not one of the group
was occupied. Some goats and a great number of naked children were
lying about on the sand. The purple shadows of the palm-trees
intensified the bareness of the sunny desert.

One little figure, with a very protruding stomach, and a very large
white metal disc on her dark chest for her only article of attire,
suddenly appeared in front of them. Silently she had risen up out of
the hot sand at their feet. Her big eyes stared at the two strange
beings whom she had been brave enough to approach. When Millicent
spoke to her she screamed and flew back to her mother's side. The
woman looked like a man, clean-limbed and as tanned as leather. Her
tent was supported by two sticks; to enter it she had to bend almost
double.

The naked child had appeared so suddenly and it had run away so
swiftly, that Millicent laughed like a child. It really was a
delicious bit of nature. The metal disc shone like a small sun.

"What a 'tummy'!" she said. Her laughter was contagious. "Just like a
baby blackbird's before it has got its feathers. And that big silver
disc!--like the family plate on the family chest."

"It's protection from all evil, poor wee mite."

"What a filthy-looking hovel," Millicent said. "Worse than a
gipsy-tent in England."

"And yet it's a home," Michael said. "And there are no more passionate
lovers of home than these tent-women, or more hospitable people."

"Do these date-trees bear fruit?" Millicent asked the practical
question irrelevantly. Her mind was charged with new interests, while
her eyes looked at the soaring trees. The tent-dwellers interested
her. She would like to have questioned them about all sorts of
intimate subjects.

"Rather! These people pay taxes, too."

"Really? Isn't there any spot on the globe where people can just live
as they like, where they can get away from income-tax and authorities?"

"I don't kno