A whole Bedouin family will live in a black tent ten by twelve, and though she had picked up wondrous ideas of high estate since her infancy, the desert upbringing remained.

Her tent was pitched each day in the midst of ours, and she ordered every one about, Grim included, as if we were her husband's purchased slaves.

And because it was Grim's idea to make use of her to gain access to her husband we all put up with it, fetching and carrying without a murmur--that is to say, all except one of us.
Whenever Narayan Singh had to do her bidding his great black beard rumbled with discontent; and as that only amused her she ordered him about more than any one, the others aiding and abetting by inventing things for him to be told to do.

But it hardly paid her in the long run.
On the third day, when we camped by an old well that Ali Baba swore was the identical one made by the angel Gabriel to provide water for Hagar and Ishmael--there are twenty or thirty of those identical wells in Palestine alone, to say nothing of Arabia--she began to take a particular fancy to Grim and to treat him with more respect, giving him the title of prince on occasion, and abusing the men for not attending more swiftly to his needs.
Now, whatever the alleged custom of other lands may be--and I refuse to be committed on that point--there is no doubt whatever about the East.

There it is the woman who makes the first advances.