oned
philanthropic fluid.

They had come home dead-beat the night before, but were first down to
breakfast, as happy as could be at the thought of the strenuous day
before them, and were ostentatiously comparing their books of notes or
jottings when Damaris came in. They went everywhere with note-books in
their hands, and made entries at the most inconvenient moments during
their journey. To you or me they would have seemed but jottings, but
Berenice could have read you a blank-verse love-poem in the thick
markings of her fountain-pen; and Ellen a _De Profundis_ from the
hieroglyphics and inscriptions copied by her scratchy stylo and under
which she essayed to bury the memory of the tomato-hued Inverness.

Damaris slid into her seat with an inward prayer that she might be
allowed time to read her mail, which consisted of a fat letter from her
godmother and a bulky one from home. "Perhaps _Marraine_ will be back
soon," she thought, opening the other letter first, as is a way with us
perverse humans. Enclosed was an atrociously-written letter to her
mother from her plain-as-a-pikestaff brother, written from Harrow.

". . . it's awfully jolly," wrote the enthusiastic youngster, "being in
Ben Kelham's house. They still talk about his last house-match against
Bumbles. Don't you remember I'd just got over mumps and we went down
for it? Bumbles had six to win and ten minutes to do it in when Howard
was bowled, and Carden, their captain, went in and drove right over the
Pav. He won the match by one, don't you remember? And then Kelham
caught him magnificently in the slips just as time was up."

Damaris looked at a bunch of jasmine lying beside her plate, and sighed
as she opened her godmother's letter; then sighed again, more
profoundly.

The duchess had arrived at Khargegh without mishap. She described the
journey, gradually ascending through the desert, then down through the
narrow valley of rocks--the wastes of rock and gravel--the beautiful
valley--the great plain to Mahariq-Khargegh with its date-palms, its
filthy lanes, its mosques, with the limestone hills almost surrounding
it.

"And we can't get any further, my dear. A report has come of the
appearance near here of a notorious robber gang which has infested the
desert farther south for years. I don't believe it myself--Hobson is
furious, as the hotel we are in is not totally devoid of--shall I call
them mosquitoes?--but the authorities refuse to allo