Massachusetts. She had hardly landed in Egypt before she realised that
the country needed putting to rights, and since the conviction struck
her she had been very fully occupied. The saddle-galled donkeys, the
starved pariah dogs, the flies round the eyes of the babies, the naked
children, the importunate beggars, the ragged, untidy women--they were
all challenges to her conscience, and she plunged in bravely at her work
of reformation. As she could not speak a word of the language, however,
and was unable to make any of the delinquents understand what it was
that she wanted, her passage up the Nile left the immemorial East very
much as she had found it, but afforded a good deal of sympathetic
amusement to her fellow-travellers. No one enjoyed her efforts more
than her niece, Sadie, who shared with Mrs. Belmont the distinction of
being the most popular person upon the boat. She was very young--fresh
from Smith College--and she still possessed many both of the virtues and
of the faults of a child. She had the frankness, the trusting
confidence, the innocent straightforwardness, the high spirits, and also
the loquacity and the want of reverence. But even her faults caused
amusement, and if she had preserved many of the characteristics of a
clever child, she was none the less a tall and handsome woman, who
looked older than her years on account of that low curve of the hair
over the ears, and that fullness of bodice and skirt which Mr. Gibson
has either initiated or imitated. The whisk of those skirts, and the
frank, incisive voice and pleasant, catching laugh were familiar and
welcome sounds on board of the _Korosko_. Even the rigid Colonel
softened into geniality, and the Oxford-bred diplomatist forgot to be
unnatural with Miss Sadie Adams as a companion.

The other passengers may be dismissed more briefly. Some were
interesting, some neutral, and all amiable. Monsieur Fardet was a
good-natured but argumentative Frenchman, who held the most decided