this teacher. She is the prompter, and always begins each sentence of the
recitation, and the other children follow on. If any mistakes are made,
she will instantly correct them.

She is a peculiar looking girl and she is not pretty. Her clothes consist
of cast off garments given her by others. Her head is generally covered
and wrapped up in a black muslin veil; then she has an _abba_ or Arabian
cloak of very green-black cashmere; then under that a many coloured
garment called a _thobe_; it is square in pattern with armholes and
sleeves nearly a yard wide. The ends of these wide sleeves are deftly
taken and thrown over the head to form a sort of tight-fitting cap.
Underneath this garment is a kind of dressing gown with tight-fitting
sleeves. Such is Fatimah's wardrobe. She wears no shoes, not even sandals.
Would you like to walk in the hot sand with no covering for your feet?

Sometimes I visit the school where Fatimah teaches the smaller girls A, B,
C. It is a topsy-turvy school indeed. The object seems to be to make as
much noise as possible; the pupils sit on the floor with a small stand or
trestle (like a saw-buck!) in front of each one to hold their Korans out
of which they read. The first pupil begins a sentence at the top of his,
or her, voice and then in a sort of refrain it is taken up by all the
others. The teacher sits outside the school very often sewing or preparing
a meal or entertaining visitors; for the schoolhouse is an ordinary mat
hut dwelling. If however a pupil makes a mistake in reading she hears
instantly and corrects it.

When the hours of prayer come around (the Moslems you know pray five times
a day) lessons are dropped. One day I called at the school at the time of
afternoon prayer. All the children had run down to the sea, to wash their
faces and hands and feet, so as to be quite pure outwardly, when repeating