“Business? What business? You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve got an Oriental gold brick up in your room?”
“Gold brick!” the little man laughed. “Oh, dear me, no! Oh, my dear sir! Here—it is not America. I have the honor to explain,” he continued, seriously. “Privilege granted? Ah! Jus’ so! I am dragoman. I am jus’ brought my party from Palestine. Ver’ fine people. I am paid off an’ mos’ generously dismiss’ with mos’ elegant references. Egypt? It is not my ver’ bes’ tour. I am not ver’ well acquaint’ with Egyptian antiquities. But I am fully acquaint’ with Holy Land an’ all things pertainin’ thereof. Holy Land! By Jove! What ver’ good Holy Land dragoman am I! By any chance you go there, Mr. Falcontent? I hope so. I do hope so. I hope so in the ver’ bottom of my heart. Ah!”
“Look here, George,” Falcontent reproved, “you haven’t told me yet how you knew my name.”
“Pst!”—scornfully. “It is nothing. The hotel clerk”—contemptuously—“have his little commission for little favor like that.”
“Oh, sure. I might have thought of that.”
“Ver’ simple thing.”
“Why didn’t you lie about it?”
Dignity galvanized the little man. “It do not compat’ with my general behavior truth an’ probity,” he said, distinctly, “to tell the lie.... An’ not one single thing is to be gain’—in the end.”
“Oh!” Falcontent blankly ejaculated.
Falcontent’s surprise was sufficiently apologetic. “You see the world, Mr. Falcontent?” the dragoman resumed, again mildly. “I do hope so. Oh my dear sir! A tour ’round the world—includin’ the Holy Land? No doubt?”