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From back in the kitchen came a sound of hammering and Tufik’s voice lifted in a low, plaintive chant. “He says that song is about the valleys of Lebanon,” said Tish miserably. “Lizzie, if you’ll eat half of it, I’ll eat the rest.”

My answer was to pick up the plate and carry it into the bathroom. Heroic measures were necessary: Tish was not her resolute self; and, indeed, through all the episode of Tufik, and the shocking denouement that followed, Tish was a spineless individual who swayed to and fro with every breeze.

She divined my purpose and followed me to the bathroom door.

“Leave some crumbs on the plate!” she whispered. “It will look more natural. Get rid of the toast too.”

I turned and faced her, the empty plate in my hands.

“Tish,” I said sternly, “this is hypocrisy, which is just next door to lying. It’s the first step downward. I have a feeling that this boy is demoralizing us! We shall have to get rid of him.”

“As for instance?” she sarcastically asked.

“Send him back home,” I said with firmness. “He doesn’t belong here; he isn’t accustomed to anything faster than a camel. He doesn’t know how to work–none of them do. He comes from a country where they can eat food like this because digestion is one of their occupations.”

I was right and Tish knew it. Even Tufik was satisfied when we put it up to him. He spread his hands in his Oriental way and shrugged his shoulders.

“If my mothers think best,” he said softly. “In my own land Tufik is known–I sell in the bazaar the so fine lace my sister make. I drink wine, not water. My stomach–I cannot eat in this America. But–I have no money.”

“We will furnish the money,” Tish said gently. “But you must promise one thing, Tufik. You must not become a Mohammedan.”

“Before that I die!” he said proudly.

“And–there is something else, Tufik,–something rather personal. But I want you to promise. You are only a boy; but when you are a man–” Tish stopped and looked to me for help.

“Miss Tish means this,” I put in, “you are to have only one wife, Tufik. We are not sending you back to start a harem. We–we disapprove strongly of–er–anything like that.”

“Tufik takes but one wife,” he said. “Our people–we have but one wife. My first child–it is called Tish; my next, Lizzie; and my next, Aggie Pilk. All for my so kind friends. And one I call Charlie Sands; and one shall be Hannah. So that Tufik never forget America.”

Aggie was rather put out when we told her what we had done; but after eating one of the cakes made of pounded beans and sugar, under Tufik’s triumphant eyes, she admitted that it was probably for the best. That evening, while Tufik took his shrunken and wrinkled clothing to be pressed by a little tailor in the neighborhood who did Tish’s repairing, the three of us went back to the kitchen and tried to put it in order. It was frightful–flour and burned grease over everything, every pan dirty, dishes all over the place and a half-burned cigarette in the sugar bin. But–it touched us all deeply–he had found an old photograph of the three of us and had made a sort of shrine of the clock-shelf–the picture in front of the clock and in front of the picture a bunch of red geraniums.

While we were looking at the picture and Aggie was at the sink putting water in the glass that held the geraniums, Tufik having forgotten to do so, Tish’s neighbor from the apartment below, an elderly bachelor, came up the service staircase and knocked at the door. Tish opened it.

“Humph!” said the gentleman from below. “Gone is he?”

“Is who gone?”

“Your thieving Syrian, madam!”

Tish stiffened.

“Perhaps,” she said, “if you will explain–“

“Perhaps,” snarled the visitor, “you will explain what you have done with my geraniums! Why don’t you raise your own flowers?”