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“I shall have to let her go,” Tish said. “He is Oriental and passionate. He has said he will kill her–and he’ll do it. They hold life very lightly.”

“Humph!” I said. “Very well, Tish, that holding life lightly isn’t a Christian trait. It’s Mohammedan–every Mohammedan wants to die and go to his heaven, which is a sort of sublimated harem. The boy’s probably a Christian by training, but he’s a Mohammedan by blood.”

Aggie thought my remark immoral and said so. And just then Hannah solved her own problem by stalking into the room with her things on and a suitcase in her hand.

“I’m leaving, Miss Tish!” she said with her eye-rims red. “God knows I never expected to be put out of this place by a dirty dago! You’ll find your woolen stockings on the stretchers, and you’ve got an appointment with the dentist tomorrow morning at ten. And when that little blackguard has sucked you dry, and you want him killed to get rid of him, you’ll find me at my sister’s.”

She picked up her suitcase and Tish flung open the door. “You’re a hard-hearted woman, Hannah Mackintyre!” Tish snapped. “Your sister can’t keep you. You’ll have to work.”

Hannah turned in the doorway and sneered at the three of us.

“Oh, no!” she said. “I’m going to hunt up three soft-headed old maids and learn to kiss their hands and tell ’em I have nobody but them and God!”

She slammed out at that, leaving us in a state of natural irritation. But our rage soon faded. Tufik was not in the parlor; and Tish, tiptoeing back, reported that he was in the kitchen and was mixing up something in a bowl.

“He’s a dear boy!” she said. “He feels responsible for Hannah’s leaving and he’s getting luncheon! Hannah is a wicked and uncharitable woman!”

“Man’s inhumanity to man,
Makes countless thousands mourn!”

quoted Aggie softly. From the kitchen came the rhythmic beating of a wooden spoon against the side of a bowl; a melancholy chant–quite archaic, as Tish said–kept time with the spoon, and later a smell of baking flour and the clatter of dishes told us that our meal was progressing.

“‘The Syrians,'” read Tish out of her book, “‘are a peaceful and pastoral people. They have not changed materially in nineteen centuries, and the traveler in their country finds still the life of Biblical times.’ Something’s burning!”

Shortly after, Tufik, beaming with happiness and Hannah clearly forgotten, summoned us to the dining-room. Tufik was not a cook. We realized that at once. He had made coffee in the Oriental way–strong enough to float an egg, very sweet and full of grounds; and after a bite of the cakes he had made, Tish remembered the dentist the next day and refused solid food on account of a bad tooth. The cakes were made of lard and flour, without any baking-powder or flavoring, and the tops were sprinkled thick with granulated sugar. Little circles of grease melted out of them on to the plate, and Tufik, wide-eyed with triumph, sweetly wistful over Tish’s tooth, humble and joyous in one minute, stood by the cake plate and fed them to us!

I caught Aggie’s agonized eye, but there was nothing else to do. Were we not his friends? And had he not made this delicacy for us? On her third cake, however, Aggie luckily turned blue round the mouth and had to go and lie down. This broke up the meal and probably saved my life, though my stomach has never been the same since. Tish says the cakes are probably all right in the Orient, where it is hot and the grease does not get a chance to solidify. She thinks that Tufik is probably a good cook in his own country. But Aggie says that a good many things in the Bible that she never understood are made plain to her if that is what they ate in Biblical times–some of the things they saw in visions, and all that. She dropped asleep on Tish’s lounge and distinctly saw Tufik murdering Hannah by forcing one of his cakes down her throat.