"Come in, Tufik," said Tish; "and I am sure Miss Pilkington would like you to sit down."
Tufik still stood with his eyes fixed on Aggie, twisting his package.
"My friend has said," he observed—he was quite calm and divinely trustful—"My friend has said that this is for Miss Pilk a sad day. My friend is my mother; I have but her and God. Unless—but perhaps I have two new friend also—no?"
"Of course we are your friends," said Aggie, feeling for the table-bell with her foot. "We are—aren't we, Lizzie?"
Tufik turned and looked at me wistfully. It came over me then what an awful thing it must be to be so far from home and knowing nobody, and having to wear trousers and celluloid collars instead of robes and turbans, and eat potatoes and fried things instead of olives and figs and dates, and to be in danger of being taken back and made into a Mohammedan and having to keep a harem.
"Certainly," I assented. "If you are good we will be your friends."
He flashed a boyish smile at me.
"I am good," he said calmly—"as the angels I am good. I have here a letter from a priest. I give it to you. Read!"
He got a very dirty envelope from his pocket and brought it round the table to me. "See!" he said. "The priest says: 'Of all my children Tufik lies next my heart.'"
He held the letter out to me; but it looked as if it had been copied from an Egyptian monument and was about as legible as an outbreak of measles.