“You’re very good, Miss Adams.  We shall be back, you know, by two o’clock.”

“Is that certain?”

“It must be certain, for we are taking no lunch with us, and we shall be famished by then.”

“Yes, I expect we shall be ready for a hock and seltzer at any rate,” said the Colonel.  “This desert dust gives a flavour to the worst wine.”

“Now, ladies and gentlemen!” cried Mansoor, the dragoman, moving forward with something of the priest in his flowing garments and smooth, clean-shaven face.  “We must start early that we may return before the meridial heat of the weather.”  He ran his dark eyes over the little group of his tourists with a paternal expression.  “You take your green glasses, Miss Adams, for glare very great out in the desert.  Ah, Mr. Stuart, I set aside very fine donkey for you—­prize donkey, sir, always put aside for the gentleman of most weight.  Never mind to take your monument ticket to-day.  Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you please!”

Like a grotesque frieze the party moved one by one along the plank gangway and up the brown crumbling bank.  Mr. Stephens led them, a thin, dry, serious figure, in an English straw hat.  His red “Baedeker” gleamed under his arm, and in one hand he held a little paper of notes, as if it were a brief.  He took Miss Sadie by one arm and her aunt by the other as they toiled up the bank, and the young girl’s laughter rang frank and clear in the morning air as “Baedeker” came fluttering down at their feet.  Mr. Belmont and Colonel Cochrane followed, the brims of their sun-hats touching as they discussed the relative advantages of the Mauser, the Lebel, and the Lee-Metford.  Behind them walked Cecil Brown, listless, cynical, self-contained.  The fat clergyman puffed slowly up the bank, with many gasping witticisms at his own defects.  “I’m one of those men who carry everything before them,” said he, glancing ruefully at his rotundity, and chuckling wheezily at his own little joke.  Last of all came Headingly, slight and tall, with the student stoop about his shoulders, and Fardet, the good-natured, fussy, argumentative Parisian.

“You see we have an escort to-day,” he whispered to his companion.

“So I observed.”

“Pah!” cried the Frenchman, throwing out his arms in derision; “as well have an escort from Paris to Versailles.  This is all part of the play, Monsieur Headingly.  It deceives no one, but it is part of the play. Pourquoi ces droles de militaires, dragoman, hein?”

It was the dragoman’s role to be all things to all men, so he looked cautiously round before he answered, to make sure that the English were mounted and out of earshot.

“C’est ridicule, monsieur!” said he, shrugging his fat shoulders. “Mais que voulez-vous?  C’est l’ordre official Egyptien.”

“Egyptien!  Pah, Anglais, Anglais—­toujours Anglais!” cried the angry Frenchman.