“Salad dressing? I’d sooner it was hair! You do get tips there anyway,” the Yankee reasoned.
“I wish I were—arrived,” the young man with the glasses, by name Guy Thin, declared. He had come out but recently from England to establish a “British Grocery,” and was the owner of what is sometimes called an expensive voice, his sedulously clear articulation missing out no syllable or letter of anything he might happen to be saying, as though he were tasting each word, like the Pure tea, or the Pure marmalade, or any other of the so very Pure goods he proposed so exclusively to sell.
“If Allah wish it then you arrive,” Lazari Demitraki assured him with a dazzling smile, catching his hand in order to construe the lines.
“Finish thy bouquet, O Lazari Demitraki,” Bachir faintly moaned.
“It finished—arranged: it with Abou!” he announced, pointing to an aged negro with haunted sin-sick eyes who appeared to be making strange grimaces at the wall. A straw hat of splendid dimensions was on his head, flaunting bravely the insignia of the Firm.
But the old man seemed resolved to run no more errands:
“Nsa, nsa,” he mumbled: “Me walk enough for one day! Me no go out any more. Old Abou too tired to take another single step! As soon would me cross the street again dis night as the Sahara!...”
And it was only after the promise of a small gift of Opium that he consented to leave a débutante’s bouquet at the Théâtre Diana.[10]
“In future,” Bachir rose remarking, “I only employ the women; I keep only girls,” he repeated, for the benefit of “Effendi darling” who appeared to be attaining Nirvâna.
“And next I suppose you keep a Harem?” “Effendi darling” somnolently returned.