minaret.

"A bit more to the left, h'if you please, miss," the woman entreated
through a mouthful of pins, and apathetically the young figure
moved.

"A bit of h'all right, now, that drape," the woman chirped, sitting
back on her heels to survey her work.

She was an odd gnome-like figure, with a sharp nose on one side of
her head and an outstanding knob of hair on the other. Into that
knob the thin locks were so tightly strained that her pointed
features had an effect of popping out of bondage.

She was London born, brought out by an English official's wife as
dressmaker to the children, remaining in Cairo as wife of a British
corporal. Since no children had resulted to require her care and
the corporal maintained his distaste for thrift, Mrs. Hendricks had
resumed her old trade, and had become a familiar figure to many
fashionable Turkish harems, slipping in and out morning and evening,
sewing busily away behind the bars upon frocks that would have
graced a court ball, and lunching in familiar sociability with the
family, sometimes having a bey or a captain or a pasha for a
vis-à-vis when the men in the family dropped in for luncheon.

As the girl did not turn her head she looked for approbation to the
third person in the room, a tall, severely handsome Frenchwoman in
black, whose face had the beauty of chiseled marble and the same
quality of cold perfection. This was Madame de Coulevain, teacher of
French and literature to the _jeunes filles_ of Cairo, former