This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

around, he's sent bournouses and red Morocco boots and tunics and brass belts and boxes and boxes of dates to every one of his department heads and foremen and——"

Olivia interrupted plaintively: "Couldn't you stop talking about Papa—for just a little while, Mamma?"

"Yes, dear," her mother said soothingly. "It's a lovely sunset, and we ought to just watch it in silence. I never saw such colours in my life,—so many different shades and all! It's so interesting, I think, after reading 'The Garden of Allah', though I don't like that place much; it seems so creepy." She lowered her voice a little. "As I was saying, you can't do anything with him, Mrs. Shuler. I wanted him to take a little rest to-day—not he! He got to talking to a young couple in the garden here yesterday afternoon—Austrians or Polish or something, but they speak English, he said, as well as he does himself—and he took a fancy to them and sat with them after dinner in the coffee-room and told them all about what Africa really needs in the way of American machinery and so on;—you know his way. So to-day he got 'em to go off on a long camel ride with him. He had lunch taken along on some other camels to eat somewhere in the Desert—you never