“You are right; every feature is incorrect—eyes, nose, and mouth; and even the crown on her head is not the crown she wears.”
It was impossible for me to explain, through the Armenian, that the impression on the coin was a heraldic decoration, and was not meant for an exact portrait of Her Majesty.
Meanwhile, fruit and sweets were brought, and I lit a cigar. When I had smoked to the stump, I stuck my pocket-knife in to hold it by.
His Highness said, “Have you no cigar-holder?”
On hearing I had not, he gave some directions to a Page boy. The boy disappeared, returning presently with about a dozen cases. His Highness opened the cases, examined them, and then, choosing two, gave them to me.
They were meerschaum and amber cigar-holders, the case being stamped with the name of a firm in Bombay. One was in the shape of a hand holding an oval, and the other was straight with a prancing horse carved on the top of it. They looked so beautifully pure in colour that it seemed a pity to defile them with tobacco smoke. However, aesthetic ideas did not prevail, and before long I had coloured them both a rich brown.
By-and-bye I began to think it must surely be getting somewhere near dinner time, when just then the clock struck—it was ten p.m. However, it was not yet the hour for the Amîr’s second meal, and he continued conversing. He told me of the habits and customs of the Afghan hillmen; of their agility and hardiness, their great stature and bodily strength: that with them meat was a luxury to be obtained only by the few and by them rarely; of the weapons they manufactured for themselves, their love of fighting, and their love of robbery. I said,
“They must be good stuff to make soldiers of.”
“Yes,” said His Highness, “but they needed taming.”
A little before midnight dinner was brought. The Amîr has two meals in the day: one about midday and the other about midnight. Occasionally the time is varied. He may breakfast at ten a.m. and dine at nine or ten p.m. He takes a cup of tea on rising, and, as a rule, some biscuits—macaroons and other sweet cakes—are brought, though he seldom eats them. At breakfast and dinner he eats as heartily as one would expect a robust man to do, but not more so. The pièce de résistance being pilau, which consists largely of rice, I think that the Amîr does not eat so much meat in the day as an ordinary Englishman. He drinks water only, at meals. Tea he drinks in the early morning and in the afternoon, and, curiously enough, tea is usually brought half-an-hour before and sometimes half-an-hour after a meal. There is no set rule as regards tea drinking. It is taken at all hours of the day, except with meals.