"Father, there's a customer," whispered Chola, but Harajar paid not the slightest attention to a tall man in a long silk robe, with a big turban on his head, who stopped to look in the shop. A Hindu merchant usually thinks it beneath his dignity to ask any one to buy his wares.
Presently the tall man said: "Are you happy?"
"I am happy," answered Harajar.
This is the Hindu way of saying "How do you do?"
Harajar then offered the tall man a seat on the rug, and his own hookah to smoke, which is the polite thing to do. The would-be customer puffed away at the great pipe for some minutes, meanwhile saying never a word. Soon he began to pay compliments; and then he looked at, and priced, nearly everything in the shop before he asked the price of the gold-mounted dagger on which he had had his eye all the time. Then came the bargaining.
Chola knew that this would take all the morning, so he slipped away to a shop a little way down the street, where a big yellow and red awning hung across the roadway.
Here were beautiful brass ornaments of all kinds, lamps, vases, pitchers, and what not, and Chola peered among these for a sight of his little friend Nao. Only Nao's father was in sight, and he sat dozing over his hookah. Farther down the street, however, Chola spied Nao's embroidered cap bobbing about between two big camels laden with great bales of cloth.
Nao as quickly caught sight of his friend Chola, and came running up at once. "Oh, Chola," he cried, as he greeted his little friend by touching his forehead and the palm of his right hand, "let us go to where the caravans gather about the city gate; the man with the camels has just told me that all the camels stopped there to rest on entering the city."
"Nay," said Chola, "there are wild, rough doings among the strange men who come down from the hills with the camels. I have heard my father say so."
"Oh, go play with thy sister, then, I will go alone," said Nao, who made out as if he would turn away.