Manchester and his shelves full of calf-skin authorities. At first he
resented it deeply. Everything seemed trivial to him compared to his
own petty routine. But gradually his eyes were opened, and he began
dimly to see that it was his work which was trivial when compared to
this wonderful, varied, inexplicable world of which he was so ignorant.
Vaguely he realised that the interruption to his career might be more
important than the career itself. All sorts of new interests took
possession of him; and the middle-aged lawyer developed an after-glow of
that youth which had been wasted among his books. His character was
too formed to admit of his being anything but dry and precise in his
ways, and a trifle pedantic in his mode of speech; but he read and
thought and observed, scoring his "Baedeker" with underlinings and
annotations as he had once done his "Prideaux's Commentaries." He had
travelled up from Cairo with the party, and had contracted a friendship
with Miss Adams and her niece. The young American girl, with her
chatter, her audacity, and her constant flow of high spirits, amused and
interested him, and she in turn felt a mixture of respect and of pity
for his knowledge and his limitations. So they became good friends, and
people smiled to see his clouded face and her sunny one bending over the
same guide-book.

The little _Korosko_ puffed and spluttered her way up the river, kicking
up the white water behind her, and making more noise and fuss over her
five knots an hour than an Atlantic liner on a record voyage. On deck,
under the thick awning, sat her little family of passengers, and every
few hours she eased down and sidled up to the bank to allow them to
visit one more of that innumerable succession of temples. The remains,
however, grow more modern as one ascends from Cairo, and travellers who
have sated themselves at Gizeh and Sakara with the contemplation of the
very oldest buildings which the hands of man have constructed, become