weeping--and Charlie Sands may say what
he likes! He was really crying--when he turned, there were large tears
on his cheeks. What made it worse was that he was trying to smile.

"I wish you much happiness on the canal," he said. "I am wicked; but my
sad heart--it ache that my friends leave me. I am sad! If only my
seester--"

* * * * *

That was the first we had known of Tufik's sister, back in Beirut,
wearing a veil over her face and making lace for the bazaars. We were to
know more.

Well, between getting ready to go to Panama and trying to find something
Tufik could do, we were very busy for the next month. Tufik grew
reconciled to our going, but he was never cheerful about it; and finding
that it pained him we never spoke about it in his presence.

He was with us a great deal. In the morning he would go to Tish, who
would give him a list of her friends to see. Then Tish would telephone
and make appointments for him, and he would start off hopefully,
with his pasteboard suitcase. But he never sold anything--except a
shirt-waist pattern to Mrs. Ostermaier, the minister's wife. We took day
about giving him his carfare, but this was pauperizing and we knew it.
Besides, he was very sensitive and insisted on putting down everything
we gave him in a book, to be repaid later when he had made a success.

The allowance idea was mine and it worked well. We figured that,
allowing for his washing,--which was not much, as he seemed to prefer
the celluloid collar,--he could live in a sort of way on nine dollars a
week. We subscribed equally to this; and to save his pride we mailed it
to him weekly by check.

His failure to sell his things hurt him to the soul. More than once we
caught tears in his eyes. And he was not well--he could not walk any
distance at all and he coughed. At last Tish got Charlie Sands to take
him to a lung specialist, a stupid person, who said it was a cigarette
cough. This was absurd, as Tufik did not smoke.

At last the time came for the Panama trip. Tish called me up the day she
packed and asked me to come over.

"I can't. I'm busy, Tish," I said.

She was quite disagreeable. "This is your burden as well as mine," she
snapped. "Come over and talk to that wretched boy while I pack my trunk.
He stands and watches everything I put in, and I haven't been able to
pack a lot of things I need."

I went over that afternoon and found Tufik huddled on the top step of
t