Page:Domestic Life in Palestine.pdf/159

152 strongly oppose its circulation, but are well grounded in matters of discipline and doctrinal points.

The two Churches vie with each other in circulating extraordinary traditions and legends of saints and martyrs, and they equally encourage pilgrimages to holy places and reliance on relics.

Soon after supper the room was cleared of all the smoking, turbaned, fezzed, and singing guests, slaves, and servants. My brother and Saleh went home with Habîb to sleep at his house. I was left alone in the large guest chamber, where Stephani had caused a bed to be made for me. I opened one of the heavy shutters, to see my friends pass round on the side of the hill, five lanterns gleaming before them. I fastened the door with a stiff clumsy lock, the mechanism of which I did not in the least understand, and I soon discovered that I was a self-made prisoner, for I could not find out how to undo it again. I was obliged to resign myself to my fate, making sure I should be set free in the morning. I fell asleep on a soft, crimson silk pillow, under an embroidered lehaff, and did not wake till the sun shone on my face through the chinks of the ill-made shutters. I was up and dressed when Stephani knocked at the door, which he contrived to open. While the room was swept and garnished I went with him to take coffee at the house of Habîb. On my return to my quarters, the female members of the family, their neighbors, and the women servants, came to look at me, but not till they were quite sure of finding me alone. They clustered shyly round the door, and I had to play the part of hostess and invite them to enter in. They were dressed in the same style as the women of Nazareth, and are quite as handsome, but more simple and modest-looking. Stephani's wife, a tall, dark-eyed woman, wore large heavy coins round her face, with a yellow mundîl folded across her forehead and tied at the back of her head; the open front of her red and white cotton dress was trimmed with a double frill, edged with braid. Her eldest daughter, a girl of ten, named Werdeh—