'I also do a brisk business in chutney,' went on Simeon. 'It's a thing women are especially fond of having brought back to them from India. And yet it's the last thing their menkind think of till I remind them of it on their return.'

'I certainly brought back none,' said the Parnass, smiling in spite of himself.

'You have been in India?'

'I have,' replied the Parnass, with a happy inspiration, 'and I brought back to my wife something more stimulating than chutney.'

'Indeed?'

'Yes, the story of the Beni-Israel, the black Jews, who, surrounded by all those millions of Hindoos, still keep their Sabbath.'

'Ah, poor niggers. Then you've been half round the world.'

'All round the world, for I went there and back by different routes. And it was most touching, wherever I went, to find everywhere a colony of Jews, and everywhere the Holy Sabbath kept sacred.'

'But on different days, of course,' said Simeon Samuels.

'Eh? Not at all! On the same day.'