The distrait girl used the hatpin lavishly on Hulda.
“Yumping Yiminy Allah!” shrieked the Arab girl and hit the desert with abandon.
Verbeena was rummaging her luggage for cigarettes when a soft voice sounded behind her:
“Madame is doubtless ready for lunch?”
The voice was pleasant, indeed, operatic and even before she turned to face him Verbeena knew she was about to get her second view of the villain, Spaghetti.
“Don’t you call me Madame,” she said fiercely, “you cowardly sandbag specialist. Don’t you call me anything less than Sheika Verbeena. There’s going to be a wedding around here as soon as I lay my hands on that unprincipled hoo-hoo of a Sheik of yours. And don’t you forget it.”
With lithe, strong fingers she proceeded to put a Grecian bend in Spaghetti’s Roman nose.
“Do you hear?”
She followed up with a little hatpin treatment while the faithful fellow let forth a coloraturo lyrico outbursto for the intervention of from twelve to fifteen hundred saints.
“Hop about and get me about fifty boxes of cigarettes, one hundred each, long, fat ones, do you hear? What’s that? Remember, once for all, Spaghetti, I want none of your sauce.”