[CHAPTER IX]
“A month. A little more than a month! Thirty-one days to be exact! O, Allah, it seems a life time!” sobbed the Sheik Amut Ben Butler. “A month since I grabbed her hot off the Biscuit! Would that then I had developed butter fingers! And yet!”
He buried his face deep in the cushions and ate at them. He didn’t cry out. It wouldn’t have done the least good.
Nobody would have answered. His horses, camels and men were all scared positively puerile and near to death of Verbeena. Whenever they saw her coming they hurried like the deuce in every other direction.
And yet!
Hypothetically considered, the situation was not extraneously alarming. But otherwise it was vicariously vazink.
The Sheik tossed and tossed around and around.
She was certainly the hottest penny he’d ever picked up in his life, this little red-head.
“The first thing you know,” he told himself, “you’ll be falling in love with this athletic young squidge. And then won’t you be ashamed of yourself!”