wait before a slave-girl enters
with the preparations for tea, orange-flower water, incense, a
well-filled tray, a samovar, and two or three dishes piled high with
cakes. If you are wise, you will most assuredly try the "gazelle's
hoofs," so-called from their shape, for they are a most delicious
compound of almond paste, with a spiciness so skilfully blended as to
be almost elusive. If you have a sweet tooth, the honey cakes will be
eminently satisfactory, but if your taste is plainer, you will enjoy
the f'kakis, or dry biscuit. Three cups of their most fragrant tea is
the orthodox allowance, but a Moorish host or hostess is not slow to
perceive any disinclination, however slight, and will sometimes of his
or her own accord pave your way to a courteous refusal, by appearing
not over anxious either for the last cup.

If you have already had an experience of dining in Morocco, the whole
process of the tea-making will be familiar; if not, you will be
interested to notice how the tea ("gunpowder") is measured in the
hand, then emptied into the pot, washed, thoroughly sweetened, made
with boiling water from the samovar, and flavoured with mint or
verbena. If the master of the house is present, he is apt to keep the
tea-making in his own hands, although he may delegate it to one of his
wives, who thus becomes the hostess of the occasion.

After general inquiries as to the purpose of your visit to Morocco,
you may be asked if you are a tabeebah or lady doctor, the one
profession which they know, by hearsay at least, is open to women. If
you can claim ever so little knowledge, you will probably be asked for
a prescription to promote an increase of adipose tissue, which they
consider their greatest charm; perhaps a still harder riddle may be
propounded, with the hope that its satisfactory solution may secure to
them the wavering affection of their lord, and prevent alienation
and, perhaps, divorce. Yet all you can say is, "In sha Allah" (If God
will!)

When you bid them farewell it will be with a keen realization of their
narrow, cramped lives, and an appreciation of your own opportunities.
Did you but know it, they too are full of sympathy for that poor,
over-strained Nazarene woman, who is obliged to leave the shelter of
her four walls, and face the world unveiled, unprotected, unabashed.

And thus our proverb is proved true.

IX

A COUNTRY WEDDING

"Silence is at the door of consent."

_Moorish Proverb._