The door opened, and a yellow dog with straight ears and a look suggesting the jackal, a dog of the country, of the Laobé breed, bounded into the room and gambolled about his master.
At the same time, a young negro girl, with a merry smile, appeared at the door of the lodging. She made a little jerky bow, brusque and comic, the negresses’ salutation, and said Kéou! (Good-day).
IX
The spahi glanced at her absently.
“Fatou-gaye,” he said in a mixture of creole French and Yolof, “open the casket; I want to take out my money.”
“Your khâliss!” (your coins), exclaimed Fatou-gaye, opening her eyes so that the whites showed against the black eyelids. “Your khâliss!” she repeated with the mixture of fear and effrontery of children who have been surprised in a fault and are afraid they will be punished.
And then she showed him her ears, on which hung three pairs of exquisitely worked gold earrings.
They were ornaments of pure Galam gold, wonderfully delicate, such as are made by black craftsmen who possess the secret of this art, plying their trade in the shade of small, low-roofed tents, where they work mysteriously, crouching on the desert sands. Fatou-gaye had just been buying these trinkets, long-coveted, and that was what had become of the spahi’s khâliss, a hundred francs or so, accumulated little by little, the fruit of a soldier’s petty economies, and set aside by him for his old parents.
The spahi’s eyes flashed, and he made as if to strike her with his whip, but his arm sank harmlessly to his side. He soon regained his self-control, Jean Peyral; he was gentle, especially towards the weak.