vice.

"He'll eat a lot of that Syrian food," I objected, "and get sick and
miss his boat, and we'll have the whole thing over again!"

But Tish was adamant. "It's his last night," she said, "and he has
promised not to smoke any cigarettes and I've given him two pepsin
tablets. This is the land of the free, Lizzie."

We were to meet Tufik at the station next morning and we arranged a
lunch for him to eat on the train, Aggie bringing fried chicken and I
sandwiches and cake. Tish's domestic arrangements being upset, she
supplied fruit, figs and dates mostly, to make him think of home.

The train left early, and none of us felt very cheerful at having to be
about. Aggie sat in the station and sneezed; Tish had a pain above her
eye and sat by a heater. We had the luncheon in a large shoebox, wrapped
in oiled paper to keep it moist.

He never appeared! The train was called, filled up, and left. People
took to staring at us as we sat there. Aggie sneezed and Tish held her
eye. And no Tufik! In a sort of helpless, breakfastless rage we called a
taxicab and went to Tish's. No one said much. We were all thinking.

We were hungry; so we spread out the shoebox lunch on one of the
Cluny-lace covers and ate it, mostly in silence. The steamer trunk and
the rug had gone. We let them go. They might go to Jerusalem, as far as
we were concerned! After we had eaten,--about eleven o'clock, I
think,--Tish got up and surveyed the apartment. Then, with a savage
gleam in her eye, she whisked off all the fancy linens, the Cluny laces,
the hemstitched bedspreads, and piled them in a heap on the floor. Aggie
and I watched her in silence. She said nothing, but kicked the whole lot
into the bottom of a cupboard. When she had slammed the door, she turned
and faced us grimly.

"That roll of fiddle-de-dees has cost me about five hundred dollars,"
she said. "It's been worth it if it teaches me that I'm an old fool and
that you are two others! If that boy shows his face here again, I'll
hand him over to the police."

However, as it happened, she did nothing of the sort. At four o'clock
that afternoon there was a timid ring at the doorbell and I answered it.
Outside was Tufik, forlorn and drooping, and held up by main force by a
tall, dark-skinned man with a heavy mustache.

"I bring your boy!" said the mustached person, smiling. "He has great
trouble--sorrow; he faint with grief."

I took a good look at Tufik then. He was pale and shaky, and