won’t hear of having another maid, though now she might quite well get one.  For I felt I oughtn’t to keep her too long in the wilds just at first, although she was quite willing to stay, and didn’t want to take me away from my work.  I knew she was naturally anxious to see something of the wonders of Egypt, and the end of it was that we decided to take a dahabeeyah trip on the Nile, and are on the eve of starting.  You should see our boat, the Loulia! she’s a perfect beauty, and, apart from a few absurd details which I haven’t the time to describe, would delight you.  The bedrooms are Paris, but the sitting-rooms are like rooms in an Eastern house.  You’ll say Paris and the East don’t go together.  Granted!  But it’s very jolly to be romantic by day and soused in modern comfort at night.  Now isn’t it?  Especially after the Fayyum.  And we’ve actually got a fountain on board, to say nothing of prayer rugs by the dozen which beat any I’ve seen in the bazaars of Cairo.  For we haven’t hired from Cook, but from an Egyptian millionaire of Alexandria called Mahmoud Baroudi, whom we met coming out, and who happened to want a tenant for his boat just in the nick of time.  It isn’t my money he needs, though I’m paying him what I should pay Cook for a first-rate boat, but he doesn’t like leaving his crew and servants with nothing to do.  He says they get into mischief.  He was looking out for a rich American—­like nearly every one out here—­when he happened to hear from one of our fellows, a first-rate chap called Ibrahim, that we wanted a good boat, and so the bargain was made.  Our plans are pretty vague.  We want to get right away from trippers, and just be together in all the delicious out-of-the-way places on the river; see the temples and tombs quietly, enter into the life of the natives—­in fact, steep ourselves to the lips in Nile water.  I can’t tell you how we are both looking forward to it.  Isaacson, we’re happy!  Out here in this climate, this air, this clearness—­like radiant sincerity it is, I often think—­it’s difficult not to be happy; but I think we’re happier even than most people out here—­at any rate I’m sure I am—­I’ll dare to say than any one else out here.  And I’ll say it with audacity and without superstitious fears of the future.  The sun’s streaming in over me as I write; I hear the voices of the watermen singing; I see my wife in the garden walking to the river bank, and I’ve got this trip before me.  And—­just remembered it!—­I’m superbly well.  Never in my life have I been in such splendid health.  They say a perfectly healthy man should be unconscious of his body.  Well, when I get up in the morning, all I know is that I say to myself, ’You’re in grand condition, old chap!’ And I think that consciousness means more than any unconsciousness.  Don’t you?  I’ve no use for all your knowledge, your skill, out here—­no use at all.  Are there really people being ill in London?  Are your consulting-rooms crowded?  I can’t believe it, any more than I can