Of course my
sister didn't know that, but she knew it very distinctly when she turned
a sharp corner and found herself in a mixed company of camels, piebald
horses, and canary-coloured vans. The dogcart was overturned in a ditch
and kicked to splinters, and the cob went home across country. Neither
my sister nor the groom was hurt, but the problem of how to get to the
Nineveh garden-party, some three miles distant, seemed rather difficult
to solve; once there, of course, my sister would easily find some one to
drive her home. 'I suppose you wouldn't care for the loan of a couple of
my camels?' the showman suggested, in humorous sympathy. 'I would,' said
my sister, who had ridden camel-back in Egypt, and she overruled the
objections of the groom, who hadn't. She picked out two of the most
presentable-looking of the beasts and had them dusted and made as tidy as
was possible at short notice, and set out for the Nineveh mansion. You
may imagine the sensation that her small but imposing caravan created
when she arrived at the hall door. The entire garden-party flocked up to
gape. My sister was rather glad to slip down from her camel, and the
groom was thankful to scramble down from his. Then young Billy Doulton,
of the Dragoon Guards, who has been a lot at Aden and thinks he knows
camel-language backwards, thought he would show off by making the beasts
kneel down in orthodox fashion. Unfortunately camel words-of-command are
not the same all the world over; these were magnificent Turkestan camels,
accustomed to stride up the stony terraces of mountain passes, and when
Doulton shouted at them they went side by side up the front steps, into
the entrance hall, and up the grand staircase.
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