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Tish was quite stunned and so was I. After all, it was Aggie who came to the rescue. She slammed the lid on to the teakettle and set it on the stove with a bang.

“If you mean,” she said indignantly, “that you think we have any geraniums of yours–“

“Think! Didn’t my cook see your thieving servant steal ’em off the box on the fire-escape?”

“Then, perhaps,” Aggie suggested, “you will look through the apartment and see if they are here. You will please look everywhere!”

Tish and I gasped. It was not until the visitor had made the rounds of the apartment, and had taken an apologetic departure, that Tish and I understood. The teakettle was boiling and from its spout coming a spicy and familiar odor. Aggie took it off the stove and removed the lid. The geraniums, boiled to a pulp, were inside.

“Back to Syria that boy goes!” said Tish, viewing the floral remains. “He did it out of love and we must not chide him. But we have our own immortal souls to think of.”

The next morning two things happened. We gave Tufik one hundred and twenty dollars to buy a ticket back to Syria and to keep him in funds on the way. And Tish got a note from Hannah:–

Dear Miss Tish: I here you still have the dago–or, as my sister’s husband says, he still has you. I am redy to live up to my bargen if you are.

HANNAH.

P.S. I have lerned a new salud–very rich, but delissious.

H.

In spite of herself, Tish looked haunted. It was the salad, no doubt. She said nothing, but she looked round the untidy rooms, where everything that would hold it had a linen cover with a Cluny-lace edge–all of them soiled and wrinkled. She watched Tufik, chanting about the plains of Lebanon and shoving the carpet-sweeper with a bang against her best furniture; and, with Hannah’s salad in mind, she sniffed a warning odor from the kitchen that told of more Syrian experiments with her digestion. Tish surrendered: that morning she wrote to Hannah that Tufik was going back to Syria, and to come and bring the salad recipe with her.

That was, I think, on a Monday. Tufik’s steamer sailed on Thursday. On Tuesday Aggie and I went shopping; and in a spirit of repentance–for we felt we were not solving Tufik’s question but getting rid of him–we bought him a complete new outfit. He almost disgraced us by kissing our hands in the store, and while we were buying him some ties he disappeared–to come back later with the rims of his eyes red from weeping. His gentle soul was touched with gratitude. Aggie had to tell him firmly that if he kissed any more hands he would get his ears boxed.

The clerks in the store were all interested, and two or three cash-boys followed us round and stood, open-mouthed, staring at us. Neither Aggie nor I knew anything about masculine attire, and Tufik’s idea was a suit, with nothing underneath, a shirt-front and collar of celluloid, and a green necktie already tied and hooking on to his collar-button. He was dazed when we bought him a steamer trunk and a rug, and disappeared again, returning in a few moments with a small paper bag full of gumdrops. We were quite touched.

That, as I say, was on Tuesday. Tufik had been sleeping in Tish’s guest-room since his desperate attempt at suicide, and we sent his things to Tish’s apartment. That evening Tufik asked permission to spend the night with a friend in the restaurant business–a Damascan. Tish let him go against my advice.

“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.”