“Then that’s all right. So you see how it is; we don’t quite know what we may do in this city. At first we were delighted to see so many attractive men, and we wanted to speak
to some of them who seemed to want to speak to us, but my father put a stop to that—but it’s absurd to think all those men might be robbers, isn’t it?”
“Very.” There was not an atom of intelligence left in his face.
“So that’s all right, then. Let me see, what was I saying? Oh, yes, I know! So four of my sisters were married, and we four remaining are being civilized.... But, oh—I wish I could be in the country for a little while! I’m so homesick for the meadows and brooks and my pajamas and my bare feet in sandals again.... And people seem to know so little in New York, and nobody understands us when we make little jests in Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, and nobody seems to have been very well educated and accomplished, so we feel strange at times.”
“D—d—do you do all those things?”
“What things?”
“M—make jests in Arabic?”
“Why, yes. Don’t you?”
“No. What else do you do?”
“Why, not many things.”