TUNIS, Tunisia -- Hillary Rodham Clinton told the story of a Tunisian widow with six daughters who shocked her neighbors by leaving the "women's work" in olive groves to start a carpet business and put her girls through college.
"She persevered, withstanding taunts and scorn, working hard and inspiring her daughters to do the same," the first lady recounted with admiration to a women's rights convention.The story of a mother-daughter dynamic of devotion and inspiration finds a reflection in the relationship that Hillary Clinton appears to share with her daughter.
After an excruciating and embarrassing year of scandal in the White House -- a year in which Hillary Clinton held her head up and her family together -- Chelsea Clinton, 19, emerged during a 12-day trip with her mother through Northern Africa as poised, polite, curious and open as ever.
A shy but indulgent smile was her reward to Egyptian photographers in Cairo's walled Coptic quarter who clucked their tongues and called out "Girlie! Girlie!" to get her to turn their way.
One of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's security agents, who was at the Clintons' service last week, said Chelsea, after poking around the tombs at Luxor's Valley of the Kings with her mother, was "so enthralled with the pharaohs" that she asked to return on her own -- if the Egyptian agents wouldn't mind.
At the El-Djem Coliseum in Kairouan, Tunisia, Chelsea ducked behind walls to study the Roman structure and knelt to peek into the pit where wild ostriches, antelope and leopards once waited to do battle with gladiators.
The Stanford University sophomore's spring break offers the most lingering glimpse in more than a year of the Clintons' much-sheltered only child.
But only a glimpse.
While Chelsea herself seems not to have withered at all during her father's scandal, the protective layers around her have thickened.
In her best-selling "It Takes a Village," Hillary Clinton likened the sheltering of Chelsea to the successively larger dolls that cradle the smallest in a set of Russian folk-art nesting dolls.
It is a metaphor borne out in practice.
At least one member of Hillary Clinton's staff is almost always at Chelsea's side.
And the staff, on orders from the first lady, instructed eight reporters traveling with the Clintons that Chelsea's casual remarks -- even her gestures -- are strictly "off the record."
Press secretary Marsha Berry explained: "She is not a public figure. . . . The fact that she is on this trip is not news."
A People magazine cover story on Chelsea this year, on top of gossipy tabloid articles last fall, appears to have strengthened the first lady's determination to shelter her daughter.
Chelsea is traveling in a spare seat on Mom's Air Force jet and bunking with her mother at hotels. None of her expenses are being paid by taxpayers, Berry said.
On earlier spring-break tours to Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the first lady often held up her companionship with Chelsea as evidence of how families should treasure daughters. And in a youth discussion in Tanzania, Hillary Clinton even turned the microphone over to her daughter while TV cameras rolled.
Not on this trip.
In a half-dozen public remarks, many focusing on girls' self-esteem, mother-daughter relationships or the empowerment of young women, the first lady has, almost pointedly, made no reference to Chelsea.
At the trip's final stop, in Morocco, Hillary Clinton made an exception from that practice Saturday, singling out her daughter in order to put at ease a shy sixth-grade girl made silent by the spectacle of news cameras and security agents.
As Naima Nuari struggled to say she wanted to be a doctor when she grows up, Hillary Clinton leaned forward, put her hands on the little girl's arms and smiled.
"You just have to ignore all these problems and all these lights," she said. Then, gesturing to Chelsea in a far corner of the classroom, Hillary Clinton said, "I have a daughter, she is here with me over there."
Chelsea also leaned forward expectantly and gave the girl an encouraging smile.