Charmides had not yet begun to thread a path through the tangle of men and merchandise when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to find Kabir at his side.
"So you are here, my Charmides! Have you come to seek us out? Who directed you hither?"
"I came by chance to this place, not knowing you were here. It is wonderful! I have not seen anything like it before."
"No. Selinous certainly has no such place. Here, indeed, we are well met. Desert needs of yours may be supplied before we leave the market. Now, Charmides, you must be made known to him who will lead you farther into the East. Hodo the Babylonian is with me. Hodo! Here!"
Kabir looked round and beckoned to a little fellow who had left him to examine the goods of a cloth merchant near by. At Kabir's call, however, he turned, and, seeing Charmides, came over to his friend's side. Charmides beheld a small man, hardly five feet high, swathed from head to heels in white garments of rich texture. Well as they were worn, however, they could not conceal the semi-deformity of the little fellow. He was altogether crooked: crooked in his legs, in his back, in his nose, in his expression—an ugly little man with an ugly little face that had in it a singularly infectious gleam of humor.
Hodo looked at Charmides, and his ugliness gathered and broke into a delighted smile that transformed every feature of his face. Charmides looked at Hodo and could not refrain from answering the smile with a gay laugh. Thenceforward Hodo felt that he had Charmides for a friend.
"Now, Theronides, Hodo will go with us into the mart here and will tell us what you need for the desert journey, that we may buy."
"But what things should I need? I have all necessary garments, as many as I can carry with me, now."
"What to wear on the head for dust?" demanded Hodo, speaking Phœnician in a deep and rather rich voice.
"This cap—and my fillet. In the heat I shall not need even those."