Presently the band stopped playing and there was a general movement of the crowd. People got up from the little tables and began to disperse. “John” leaned forward to his employers, and in a quick and rattling voice informed them that a “fust-rate” variety entertainment was about to take place in another part of the garden. Would they come to see it? There would be beautiful women, very fine girls such as can only be gazed on in Constantinople, taking part in the “show.”
The young men agreed to “have a look at it,” and followed John to a place where many round tables and chairs were set out before a ramshackle wooden barrack of a theatre, under the shade of some pepper trees, through whose tresses the stars peeped at a throng and a performance which must surely have surprised them.
The band, or a portion of it, was again at work, playing an inane melody, and upon the small stage two remarkably well-developed and aquiline-featured women of mature age, dressed as very young children in white socks, short skirts which displayed frilled drawers, and muslin bonnets adorned with floating blue and pink ribbons, swayed to and fro and joined their cracked voices in a duet, the French words of which seemed to exhale a sort of fade obscenity. While they swayed and jigged heavily, showing their muscular legs to the staring audience, they gazed eagerly about, seeking an admiration from which they might draw profit when their infantile task was over. Presently they retired, running skittishly, taking small leaps into the air, and aimlessly blowing kisses to the night.
“Very fine girls!” murmured John to his young patrons. “They make much money in Pera.”
One of the young men shrugged his shoulders with a smile.
“Get us two Turkish coffees, John!” he said. Then he turned to his companion. “I say, Ellis, have you noticed an English feller—at least I take him to be English—who’s sitting over there close to the stage, sideways to us?”
“No; where is he?” asked his companion.
“You see that old Turk with the double chin?”
“Rather.”
“Just beyond him, sitting with a guide who’s evidently Greek.”