A TERRIBLE DISASTER 45 of immense benefit to her son, and she therefore insisted from the first that the woman should always talk to him in one or other of the languages that she knew.

Thus Gregory, almost unconsciously, acquired several of the dialects used in the Soudan. Arabic formed the basis of them all, except the negro tongue. At first he mixed them up, but as he grew Mrs. Hilliard insisted that his nurse should speak one for a month and then use another, so that by the time he was twelve years old the boy could speak in the negro tongue and half a dozen dialects with equal facility. His mother had years before engaged a teacher of Arabic for him; this he learned readily, as it was the root of the Egyptian and the other languages he had picked up. Of a morning he sat in the school and learned pure Arabic and Turkish while the boys learned English, and therefore, without an effort, when he was twelve years old he talked these languages as well as English, and had moreover a smattering of Italian and French picked up from boys of his own age, for his mother had now many acquaintances among the European community. While she was occupied in the afternoon with her pupils the boy had liberty to go about as he pleased, and indeed she encouraged him to take long walks, to swim, and to join in all games and exercises. “ English boys at home,” she said, “ have many games, and it is owing to these that they grow up so strong and active. They have more opportunities than you, but you must make the most of those that you have. We may go back to England some day, and I should not at all like you to be less strong than others.”

As, however, such opportunities were very small, she had an apparatus of poles, horizontal bars, and ropes set up, such as those she had seen in England in use by the boys of one of the families where she had taught before her marriage, and insisted upon Gregory’s e:ercising himself upon it for an hour every morning, soon after sunrise. As she had heard her husband once say that fencing was a splendid exercise,