"I wonder," said Billy, "if I met a nice Turkish lady, whether she
would get me an invitation? Then we could have another waltz----"

"There aren't any Turkish ladies there," uttered Miss Beecher
rebukingly. "Don't you know that? When they are on the
Continent--those that are ever taken there--they may go to dances
and things, but here they can't, although some of them are just as
modern as you or I, I've heard, and lots more educated."

"You speak," he protested, "from a superficial acquaintance with my
academic accomplishments."

"Are you so very--proficient?"

"I was--I am Phi Beta Kappa," he sadly confessed.

Her laugh rippled out. "You don't look it," she cheered.

"Oh, no, I don't look it," he complacently agreed. "That's the lamp
in the gloom. But I am. I couldn't help it. I was curious about
things and I studied about them and faculties pressed honors upon
me. I am even here upon a semi-learned errand. I wanted to have a
look at the diggings a friend of mine is making at Thebes and
several looks at the dam at Assouan, for I am by way of being an
engineer myself--a beginning engineer."

"You have been up the Nile, then?"

"Yes, I'm just back. Now I'm going to see something of Cairo before