“Twelve piastres (fifty-three cents),” said Archag.
“Twelve piastres! you wish to ruin me then? A cravat that comes straight from Vienna, and cost me three piastres duty! I will let you have it for eighteen piastres.”
Again a pretended exit of the shoppers.
Finally, after twenty minutes of haggling and excited talk, Archag got his famous necktie for fifteen piastres, and our three friends left the shop radiant, escorted by the merchant, cringing and bowing repeatedly.
“Good business!” he said to himself, as soon as their backs were turned. “I have had that ugly old rag in the shop for two years, and never expected to get rid of it at such a price.”
The tailor’s shop was only a few steps away. Archag, acting on his friend’s advice, bought a suit of serge. He tried it on at once, and then looked at himself in a mirror, surveying with great satisfaction his slender figure, his snow-white collar and blue cravat, and as a finishing touch, a scarf-pin in the shape of a four-leaf clover, the gift of his two friends. The merchant, his clerks, Garabed and Aram all declared that the suit fitted him like a glove.
Archag, however, felt very much hampered by his trousers, which hit against his legs at every step; his suspenders pulled, and his stiff collar choked him, and he gave a sigh of envy as he looked at his flannel robe lying on a chair. But he paid his bill of two pounds and a half, took his zouboun on his arm, and went back to college with his companions.
THE ARABA
A party of students had gone out to meet Monsieur Bernier, and the others were waiting for him on the campus. About fifteen minutes after Archag and his friends had rejoined their mates, the sound of a carriage was heard in the distance. “They are coming, they are coming!” called a voice, and they all ran to the foot of the hill. Dr. Mills and Dr. Spencer, on horseback, were at the head of the party; the boys, a few of them on bicycles, the greater number on donkeys or walking, were crowding about the araba, a peculiar sort of Turkish carriage used by travelers in the interior of Asia Minor. It is a wagon without springs, having a hood of gray cloth; trunks are fastened on anywhere, underneath, or at the sides of the vehicle. The traveler lies on a mattress; he has a basket of provisions at hand, in which he is likely to forage very often, to beguile the length of the journey. Consider, dear reader, that the carriage-roads in Turkey are often little better than country lanes, that it is sometimes necessary to drive across rivers and marshes, or again, to follow rough, stony roads, and run the risk of being attacked by brigands, and you will realize that a journey in an araba is no pleasure trip. Monsieur Bernier had come from Alexandretta, and had spent three days in his araba; he had been obliged to stay each night at a khan, where he had been almost devoured by vermin; it was therefore a great relief to him to find himself at last at his journey’s end.