straight by that time and was holding it with
both hands to avoid jarring. She looked goaded and desperate; and, as
she said afterward, the thing slipped out before she knew she was more
than thinking it.

"Oh, damn Tufik!" she said.

Fortunately at that moment we blew out a tire and apparently Tish did
not hear her. While I was jacking up the car and Tish was getting the
key of the toolbox out of her stocking, Aggie sat sullenly in her place
and watched us.

"I suppose," she gibed, "a camel never blows out a tire!"

"It might," Tish said grimly, "if it heard an oath from the lips of a
middle-aged Sunday-school teacher!"

We ate Mr. Wiggins's anniversary dinner without any great hilarity.
Aggie's neck was very stiff and she had turned in the collar of her
dress and wrapped flannels wrung out of lamp oil round it. When she
wished to address either Tish or myself she held her head rigid and
turned her whole body in her chair; and when she felt a sneeze coming on
she clutched wildly at her head with both hands as if she expected it to
fly off.

Tufik was not mentioned, though twice Tish got as far as Tu-- and then
thought better of it; but her mind was on him and we knew it. She worked
the conversation round to Bible history and triumphantly demanded
whether we knew that Sodom and Gomorrah are towns to-day, and that a
street-car line is contemplated to them from some place or other--it
developed later that she meant Tyre and Sidon. Once she suggested that
Aggie's sideboard needed new linens, but after a look at Aggie's rigid
head she let it go at that.

No one was sorry when, with dinner almost over, and Aggie lifting her
ice-cream spoon straight up in front of her and opening her mouth with
a sort of lockjaw movement, the bell rang. We thought it was Charlie
Sands. It was not. Aggie faced the doorway and I saw her eyes widen.
Tish and I turned.

A boy stood in the doorway--a shrinking, timid, brown-eyed young
Oriental, very dark of skin, very white of teeth, very black of hair--a
slim youth of eighteen, possibly twenty, in a shabby blue suit, broken
shoes, and a celluloid collar. Twisting between nervous brown fingers,
not as clean as they might have been, was a tissue-paper package.

"My friends!" he said, and smiled.

Tish is an extraordinary woman. She did not say a word. She sat still
and let the smile get in its work. Its first effect was on Aggie's neck,
which she forgot. Tufik's timid eyes rested for