d to give
lessons in English, French, or music.

The idea pleased them, and she obtained several pupils. Some of these
were the ladies themselves, and the lessons generally consisted in
sitting for an hour with them, two or three times a week, and talking
to them; the conversation being in short sentences, of which she gave
them the English translation, which they repeated over and over again,
until they knew them by heart. This caused great amusement, and was
accompanied by much laughter, on the part of the ladies and their
attendants.

Several of her pupils, however, were young boys and girls, and the
teaching here was of a more serious kind. The lessons to the boys were
given the first thing in the morning, and the pupils were brought to
her house by attendants. At eleven o'clock she taught the girls, and
returned at one, and had two hours more teaching in the afternoon. She
could have obtained more pupils, had she wished to; but the pay she
received, added to her income, enabled her to live very comfortably,
and to save up money. She had a Negro servant, who was very fond of the
boy, and she could leave him in her charge with perfect confidence,
while she was teaching.

In the latter part of 1884, she ventured to hope that some news might
yet come to her, for a British expedition had started for the relief of
General Gordon, who had gone up early in the year to Khartoum; where it
was hoped that the influence he had gained among the natives, at the
time he was in command of the Egyptian forces in the Soudan, would
enable him to make head against the insurrection. His arrival had been
hailed by the population, but it was soon evident to him that, unless
aided by England with something more than words, Khartoum must finally
fall.

But his requests for aid were slighted. He had asked that two regiments
should be sent from Suakim, to keep open the route to Berber, but Mr.
Gladstone's government refused even this slight assistance to the man
they had sent out, and it was not until May that public indignation, at
this base desertion of one of the noblest spirits that Britain ever
produced, caused preparations for his rescue to be made; and it was
December before the leading regiment arrived at Korti, far up the Nile.

After fighting two hard battles, a force that had marched across the
loop of the Nile came down upon it above Metemmeh. A party started up
the river at once, in two steamers which Gordon had sent down t