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[Page 55]
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& keep open till about 3 G.M. Here all ceremony disappears. We are at liberty to grab any girl in the room & dance with her. When we seat ourselves at the little tables the flighty maidens immediately come and sit next to us & order drinks. We pay for their wine and they dance with us. These halls are always packed to the doors and soldiers especially the Palmarium Casino & Abbaye de Rose. But some of them are of ill repute & as none of you girls would be taken to any of them. I hasten to more polite and conventional happenings.
The good Presbyterians of Cairo have been particularly kind in entertaining Presbyterian soldiers. Each Saturday afternoon there is a short service at St Andrews, then headed by about 25 stalwart pipers we march to the Grand Continental Hotel. Here we enjoy an old fashioned bun fight the good ladies waiting on the soldiers hand & foot. Also there are several very nice young ladies to add to the attractiveness of the function.
After the feed comes the speechifying. Lt Col Merrington spoke very nicely one afternoon (Give Flora M my love will you Flo and tell her that Ernest is well) and there were others of note including Sir Alexander Baird & many officers. In all humility and modesty let me announce that I made a bit of a hit with my elocutionary efforts. On Saturday I was down for one piece and gave 4 (Tell Jim he will have to look to his laurels paper). On Tuesday I went out to Sir Alex Bairds & had a most enjoyable afternoon. He has a beautiful mansion near Zeitoun & he lives here in the Winter. There are some fine old ferns there & wattles & it just felt like home especially when I saw a galah in a cage. The mansion is great & the books and the paintings are fine. Sir Alex is a fine old Unionist & it is very interesting to hear him castigate the Liberals. His son is in the Gordon Highlanders & was with Sir Robert Duff in Sydney. It will give you some