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Aggie caught my arm. “What’s that?” she quavered.

I had no time to reply. Tufik had thrown open the door and stood aside to let us pass.

“They dance,” he said gravely. “There is always much dancing before a wedding. The music one hears is of Damascus and he who dances now is a sheik among his people.”

Reassured as to the sounds, we stepped down into the basement. That was at four o’clock in the afternoon.

I have never been fairly clear as to what followed and Aggie’s memory is a complete blank. I remember a long, boarded-in and floored cellar, smelling very damp and lighted by flaring gas jets. The center was empty save for a swarthy gentleman in a fez and his shirt-sleeves, wearing a pair of green suspenders and dancing alone–a curious stamping dance that kept time to a drum. I remember the musicians too–three of them in a corner: one playing on a sort of pipes-of-Pan affair of reeds, one on a long-necked instrument that looked like a guitar with zither ambitions, and a drummer who chanted with his eyes shut and kept time to his chants by beating on a sheepskin tied over the mouth of a brass bowl. Round three sides of the room were long, oil cloth-covered tables; and in preparation for the ceremony a little Syrian girl was sweeping up peanut shells, ashes, and beer bottles, with absolute disregard of the guests.

All round the wall, behind rows of beer bottles, dishes of bananas, and plates of raw liver, were men,–soft-eyed Syrians with white teeth gleaming and black hair plastered close and celluloid collars,–gentle-voiced, urbane-mannered Orientals, who came up gravely one by one and shook hands with us; who pressed on us beer and peanuts and raw liver.

Aggie, speaking between sneezes and over the chanting and the drum, bent toward me. “It’s a breath of the Orient!” she said ecstatically. “Oh, Lizzie, do you think I could buy that drum for my tabouret?”

“Orient!” observed Tish, coughing. “I’m going out and take the switch-key out of that car. And I wish I’d brought Charlie Sands!”

It was in vain we reminded her that the Syrians are a pastoral people and that they come from the land of the Bible. She looked round her grimly.

“They look like a lot of bandits to me,” she sniffed. “And there’s always a murder at a wedding of this sort. There isn’t a woman here but ourselves!”

She was exceedingly disagreeable and Aggie and I began to get uncomfortable. But when Tufik brought us little thimble-sized glasses filled with a milky stuff and assured us that the women had only gone to prepare the bride, we felt reassured. He said that etiquette demanded that we drink the milky white stuff.

Tish was inclined to demur. “Has it any alcohol in it?” she demanded. Tufik did not understand, but he said it was harmless and given to all the Syrian babies; and while we were still undecided Aggie sniffed it.

“It smells like paregoric, Tish,” she said. “I’m sure it’s harmless.”

We took it then. It tasted sweet and rather spicy, and Aggie said it stopped her sneezing at once. It was very mild and pleasant, and rather medicinal in its flavor. We each had two little glasses–and Tish said she would not bother about the switch-key. The car was insured against theft.

A little later Aggie said she used to do a little jig step when she was a girl, and if they would play slower she would like to see if she had forgotten it. Tish did not hear this–she was talking to Tufik, and a moment later she got up and went out.

Aggie had decided to ask the musicians to play a little slower and I had my hands full with her; so it was with horror that, shortly after, I heard the whirring of the engine and through the cellar window caught a glimpse of Tish’s machine starting off up the hill. I rose excitedly, but Tufik was before me, smiling and bowing.