"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?"
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.