Billy B. Hill was sitting at tea in Cairo when he overheard an exchange between a young English gentleman and a young American lady named Arlee Beecher. The English gentleman was appalled that Arlee Beecher was walking alone with a native. But Arlee Beecher -- who saw nothing wrong with walking with a gentleman educated in Oxford -- fought back against the English gentleman. When all was said and done, Arlee Beecher left the Englishman in a most angry of spirit. Billy B. Hill, having seen this exchange, decides that Arlee Beecher needed a strong hand to make her understand how a proper girl should act. But as Billy becomes more involved with Arlee, he sees that her spirit and mind are not such an easy thing to bend to his will. And perhaps her bohemian ways are not so wrong after all. . . .

Author Biography

Mary Hastings Bradley (1882 - 1976) was a traveler and author. She was the mother of author Alice Sheldon ("James Tiptree, Jr."). In 1921 and 1922 Mary, Herbert and Alice traveled to the Belgian Congo with her uncle, Carl E. Akeley of the American Museum of Natural History, for specimens of the mountain gorilla for display in the museum. These expeditions were described in her books, On the Gorilla Trail, Alice in Jungleland and Alice in Elephantland. In 1938 her story "The Life of the Party" was chosen to appear in The O. Henry Prize Stories anthology. As a war correspondent for Colliers Magazine in 1945, Mary took on the difficult task of reporting on women in the military in Italy, France, and Germany. At the close of the war she recounted her tour of concentration camps in a magazine feature series on the Holocaust.