"Silence!"
Then, turning to me, he inquired if I could not give him some medicine for his stomach.
"But your tooth hurts you, not your stomach," I observed.
"Yes," replied the man, "but, for all that, I should like some medicine."
Taking some pills from my medicine-chest, I gave them to him. The old man, putting three pills in his mouth, commenced chewing them with great gusto.
"My tooth is better already," he remarked, and in a few minutes prepared to leave the room, accompanied by his sons and the Imaum. The latter was very much disappointed that my host's tooth had not been operated upon.
"If it had been my tooth, I should have had it out," he observed to me sotto voce; "but he is afraid."
The Kurd overheard the remark.
"You would have done nothing of the kind," he replied. "You would have swallowed the medicine like me!"—and a whelping cry from a dog outside the door announced to us that the old gentleman had vented his bile on the ribs of the animal in question.