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217.

It was entirely Hayes’ doings that we became so intimate but I was quite willing
to profit by his usefulness to us, and his ability to speak
Arabic enabled us, whenever he could get off, to take seve-
little trips from the steamer with him as a guide & interpreter which otherwise would have
been difficult. As we were approaching Cairo on our return
our friend intimated several times that he would be pleased
to be invited by us to dine at the table d’hote of our hotel
when we were all safely on shore again. We never responded
to this announcement and on our return we did not invite
him - which must have mortified him considerably, for upon
meeting him several times afterwards in Cairo and Alex-
andria he always looked at us as if we had never met,
and our last sight of him was on the day of our departure
for Malta. He was in a small native boat almost touching
ours for a short distance, bound for some other vessel, and
we observed each other without a sign of recognition. It was
rather a small thing for us not to have invited him as he
so much desired, for he had been very companionable and
useful and Hayes had been constantly with him in his
cabin. Another person whom I saw several times while at Al-
exandria was the dragoman who had shot off the end of one of
his fingers while we were at Luksor and whose wound I attended
to. There were some small particles of bone which were working
their way to the surface and about which he consulted me whenever
we met. I could give him no relief and merely encouraged him to
wait patiently until they had all come away. At the same time
I feared that one with more surgical experience might have cri-
ticised my too hurried sewing up of the wound.

I had the opportunity while on the Alma to notice the difference
between the English who were returning from India after having
seen some months before those who were going there. The
first lot had the healthy looks of being recently from their homes,
while the others, after an absence of from three to five years, were
coming back so changed by the terrible climate of India as
to have lost the peculiar national appearance of English
people. There was a number of these on board but the steamer
was not crowded with them.

A literary gentleman and his wife who had spent the winter
in Egypt was a Mr Senior. I found his wife capable of a good
deal of small talk and I handed her to dinner more than
once. She appreciated the attention and her husband called
upon me while at Malta. She knew Dickens and other writers
and amused me by saying how conceited and self conscious
the great novelist was in company. I was reading Pickwick while
on board and it amazed her to know that I was only doing so for
the first time.

Notwithstanding the fleetness of the Vectis under steam