His conscience said sternly that though an untutored slave girl, reared in a highly unfavorable atmosphere, she at least showed a devotion to duty and a sense of moral values which Tony was not displaying. Only Heaven knew, said Tony’s conscience, what enormities he might commit at any time, now that he had ceased to heed his proper mentor—it was fortunate that this poor slave girl had a sense of duty!
To this Tony replied that Ghail’s sense of duty had led her to pick out two very attractive slave girls as presents for him, and since he was going off somewhere and didn’t know when he’d be back, he might as well call them in and have some music while he waited.
He stood up to pull the bell cord.
Then he saw a stirring down at floor level out of the corner of his eye. He whirled with something like a gasp. After the affair of the dungeon courtyard and the windowsill last night, he was becoming jumpy when bugs and frogs and other small objects moved in his neighborhood.
Two of the marble tiles of the floor were rising where they joined, as if something swelled beneath them. Tony stared, momentarily paralyzed. A green shoot appeared and grew. Leaves appeared at its tip as he watched. Branches spread out, and more leaves, and then a bud. The bud swelled. It opened into an enormous lush blossom of a violent magenta hue. And then the flower rearranged itself. It became a miniature head—and there was the beaming, sentimental face of Nasim the djinnee, wearing her explicitly minus-I.Q. expression of amiability.
“Sh-h-h-h!” said the face in the flower, coyly.
Tony gulped. “I’m sh-sh-h-h-shed,” he said. “What’s up?”
“I’m sorry about Es-Souk,” said the djinnee, beaming. “He’s so jealous! He can’t help it, poor thing! The king has put him in jail and it serves him right!”
Tony said: “Oh!”
“I felt that I had to tell you I was sorry,” said the djinnee, almost simpering. “You’re not angry with me?”