rose tints; their features
were fairly good, though rather thick; the eyes in each case were
beautiful--large, dark, lustrous, with sweeping lashes. Their figures,
under their loose garments, looked like feather pillows. They were
awkward in bearing and gait, but this might have been owing to the fact
that their small plump feet (in white open-work cotton stockings) were
squeezed into very tight French slippers with abnormally high heels,
upon which it must have been difficult to balance so many dimples. The
one exception to the rule of billowy beauty was a slender, even meagrely
formed girl, who in America would pass perhaps for seventeen; probably
she was three years younger. Her thin, dark, restless face, with its
beautiful inquiring eyes, was several times close beside mine as we both
inspected the golden bracelets and ear-rings, the necklaces and fan, of
Queen Ahhotpu, our sister in vanity of three thousand five hundred years
ago. I looked more at her than I did at the jewels, and she returned my
gaze; we might have had a conversation. What would I not have given to
have been able to talk with her in her own tongue! After a while they
all assembled in what is called the winter garden, an up-stairs
apartment, where grass grows over the floor in formal little plots.
Chairs were brought, and they seated themselves amid this aerial verdure
to partake of sherbet, which the youngest eunuch handed about with a
business-like air. While they were still here, much relaxed as regards
attire and attitude, my attention was attracted by the rush through the
outer room (where I myself was seated) of the four older eunuchs. They
had been idling about; they had even gone down the stairs, leaving to
the youngest of their number the task of serving the sherbet; but now
they all appeared again, and the swiftness with which they crossed the
outer room and dashed into the winter-garden created a breeze. They
called to their charges as they came, and there was a general smoothing
down of draperies. The eunuchs, however, stood upon no ceremony; they
themselves attired the ladies in the muffling cloaks, and refastened
their veils securely, as a nurse dresses children, and with quite as
much authority. I noticed that the handsomer faces showed no especial
haste to disappear from view; but there was no real resistance; there
was only a good deal of laughter.

I dare say that there was more laughter still (under the veils) when the
cause of