Trenchard took the packet, removed the cloth, and looked at the exquisite golden kerchief.
“By Jove! what a beautiful thing,” he exclaimed.
Namlah smiled and nodded her sleek head at his genuine admiration.
“It is woven of her Excellency’s hair!”
“Helen’s hair!” He turned to Yussuf’s Eyes as the youth pressed something hard and heavy into his hands, speaking by gesture, which his mother translated.
His fine teeth gleamed and his beautiful eyes flashed as he watched Trenchard remove the wrapping from the heavy object.
“However did you get this?” Trenchard cried, as he delightedly turned his own automatic over in his hand and released the full clip.
“The mistress, and may Allah guide a bullet to her black heart, commanded the Patriarch, who is the oldest amongst us and possessed of a very devil of gaming, to guard the weapon of death for your departure, Excellency. The old one, bereft of his last piastre and of the very qamis from about his shrunken old body, did lose the weapon in a bet to my son when you did wrestle with and overthrow the Nubian.”
Trenchard tried to express his delight at the gifts, upon which, with all the Arab’s genuine and world-famed hospitality, the two natives offered him all they possessed.
“My son,” whispered Namlah, “will live with me in the Bazaar, yea! and with us will sojourn Yussuf, his friend. The blind one will sit peacefully in the sun until he find a wife to take pity upon him, whilst ‘His Eyes,’ even my son, will sell the steel of Damascus inlaid with gold to the faithful and to the infidel. Our home will be humble, O white man, but our food and our drink, our raiment and our couch, will be for you and her Excellency if your Excellencies should see fit to honour our humble dwelling and I——” She stopped suddenly and held up her hand as she listened to the sound of a dog barking.