table at the end of the hall, and wrote something on the face of the bill. Pooh Bah had literally gone over to the other side of the stage and become manager himself. He returned in less than three minutes with the corrected bill, with apologies from the manager three miles away at the fort, and with his autograph "Thanks" written at the end. Then the combination butler-manager-bookkeeper took the money, went back to the hall table, and receipted the bill, which was all in the one handwriting.
All the doors of my room, the windows, the hall, staircase, and portico were full of salaaming servants when leave-taking came. The neighborhood must have been emptied for our farewell, as well as the village of servants in the back yard. From the triple-part chief to the humblest coolie, gardener, water-carrier, sweeper, and the despised woman slavey, all stood expectant, rubbing their noses upward with their palms and extending their hands as they wailed: "Prissint! Prissint! Oh, memsahib, prissint!"
"Will you kindly telephone to the hotel when the ship is sighted Sunday morning. There are eight passengers there," I had said to the clerk on Saturday. "Oh, madam," said the pink Englishman in a shocked tone, "the telephone cannot be used on Sundays. The telephone office is closed."
At sunrise and at sunset we drove to the empty harbor, and a black babu at the door of the steamship office said: "The Khedive, she will not come until morning now. She cannot get in the entrance of the breakwater without daylight."
