Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/387

 himself of it by delivering my luggage. After long delay I got together seven portmanteaus and packages, several of them indispensable things for the voyage bought in Alexandria or Cairo, and seven black gentlemen proffered themselves to take charge of them (or more than seven, indeed, for they believe in division of labour), and carry them to the Suez Hotel nearly half a mile distant. To distribute the baggage would have been easy, but in a dark night, on the borders of the Great Desert, after half a mile's walk, to reassemble the scattered fragments might not be so easy. I will not trouble you with the close of the story, but you see that a traveller without a dragoman gets disciplined in patience and resourcefulness.

I trust Lady O'Hagan will forgive me for being the cause of your making so disagreeable a journey in so inclement a season, more especially as I would have forbidden it if I could. It will be a pleasant memory hereafter and always, but while you were with me I had an uneasy sense of inflicting a great wrong on you. Do not omit to give her my best wishes, and thanks for many kindnesses; and so I will say not "adieu" but "au revoir."—Always yours, .

Some suspicion of small-pox sent our ship into quarantine, but I had a country house within ten minutes' ride of the Sanatory Station, and I soon saw my sons through the gate, and had my favourite horse sent into the quarantine grounds, and after a few days I was in my home again.