Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/748

696 grinning, blue-nightgowned youth—began to air his three words of English for our benefit, so that finally we made bold to ask him the name of one of the steeds. Picture our surprise when the answer came, "prompt as rhyme," "He Fair Rosalie!" Proud was no word for it. At the greatness thrust upon him the fortunate rider sat up very straight and stiff, waiting for a chance to parade his luck, when a neighbor at table—a stocky youth from "the States"—hove alongside, and sang out, "I say, I've got a peach of a donkey,—her name's Fair Rosalie,—ain't she a corker?" We were aghast, almost personally insulted by his silly mistake, but, after all, he was more to be pitied than snubbed, and—he had pushed on ahead, while in his place a puffing, blowing little Englishman in check riding-breeches pressed hard for the right of way. "Aw—by Jove—jolly fools these Arabs," he drawled in a voice of serious objection. "Boy says my donkey's named

Fair Rosalie—beastly amusing, because—er—can't be, you know!" and he too was lost in the crowd. Were we going mad, or—no; quite in another direction, for before he knew it Fair Rosalie's rider found himself prone in the dust beside Fair Rosalie, while the donkey-boy explained that he had only twisted her tail to make her go faster, and a white-haired Princeton professor in gold-rimmed spectacles bent over the sufferer and asked if he were hurt. The unfortunate one mounted and went on, but the professor still hovered protectingly alongside, his mild voice murmuring: "I have been greatly interested in studying the poetic strain which one finds so prominently exemplified in the Eastern races, and in these people of Egypt it seems curiously interwoven with the most apparently material side of their existence. Could there be anything more charming, for instance, than the name its master has bestowed on this pretty little steed of mine—Fair Rosalie?"

That was the last straw. It had now become a question of solving the mystery or losing our minds, so we set to work, and soon discovered that every donkey in the place was called "Fair Rosalie," except one, which rejoiced in the proud appellation of "God save the Queen." The explanation was touching in its simplicity. It seems that on the first tourist-boat of the season several people had asked for a particularly good donkey named "Fair Rosalie"; now no one is quicker than an Arab to seize an opportunity, and so when the next horde of tourists burst on Bedrachein, the miracle was already wrought, and every donkey in the village had been rechristened, save Britain's national anthem,—which perhaps was a question of politics.