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Page 109
"I said he followed. I daresay she lured, too. The second
string----"
"Then it's quite _nice_ of me, isn't it, to carry off her second
string to the bazaars and prevent her playing him against Robert!"
Lady Claire laughed mischievously, in a flight of daring so foreign
to her usual reticence that Miss Falconer grimly perceived that she
was changed indeed. She thought helplessly that it was a great pity
that young people couldn't be treated as the children they
were--smacked and made to do what was best for them.
"And after all this dreadful gossiping how can we face our guests at
tea?" the girl continued in mock chiding.
"If they are much later we shall not be facing them at all," the
older woman declared. "I shall certainly have my tea at the proper
time."
The sight of an Arab servant with a tray of dishes had stirred her
to this declaration, and promptly she gave her order. In the middle
of it, "I'm always late!" said a merry voice, and little Miss
Beecher and Falconer were standing on the grass beside them.
"This time we had no following engagement," said Miss Falconer,
unpleasantly reminiscent of another tea time in Cairo, ten days
before, but even with her resentment of this American girl's
intrusion into her long-cherished plans, she could not prevent the
softening of her regard as she gazed upon her.
"You don't look as if you had been riding very hard at the Tombs of
the Kings," she observed, in reluctant admiration.
"Oh, but we have! We did quite a lot of Tombs--not anything like
thoroughly, of course!--and then we rode back early and made
ourselves tidy for your tea party," Arlee blithely explained, and
Miss Falconer perceived that her brother Robert had returned to the
hotel without seeking them out, had arrayed himself in fresh white
flannels and returned to the boat to escort Miss Beecher across the
road into the hotel garden.
Absently she sighed. Her eyes fell away from the peach-blossom
prettiness of Arlee's lovely face to the subtle simplicity of her
white frock of loosely woven silk, and she wondered if that heavy
embroidery meant money--or merely spending money. And then she
looked across at Lady Claire, and sighed again for her dream of an
aristocratic alliance.
"Mrs. Eversham--?" she thought to inquire.
"They're having the vicar--or is it the rector?--to tea. They asked
him this morning before your message came," Arlee explained. She did
not explain that the vicar, or the rector, had imagined, in
accepting, that she, too, was to be of that tea party on the boat
and was even now inquiring zealously of her of the Evershams.
"Here's Mr. Hill," said Lady Claire.
Miss Falconer stirred; there was room for the fifth chair between
her and Arlee. Lady Claire also stirred; there was room between her
and Robert Falconer. And there Billy B. Hill seated himself after a
general exchange of greetings.
"How were the bazaars?" said Arlee gaily across the table.
"You mean the department store of Mr. Isaac Cohen," Billy laughed
back. "They are all under him, you know."
"Not _really_!" Falconer exclaimed, in disillusionment. "It rather
takes it out, doesn't it, to know it is so commercialized."
"What did you expect--it is the twentieth century," Miss Falconer
retorted, putting aside her knitting as the tea things arrived.
"Sometimes it is," said Arlee.
"I think it's more so than ever, here," declared Lady Claire.
"Egypt's so _frightfully_ civilized----"
"Not when you're camping in the desert."
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