Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/737

Rh was called fair), I promptly replied that I regarded Miss Pipson in the light of a fair Circassian.

"And what then?" Miss Bule pensively asked.

I replied that she must be inveigled by a merchant, brought to me veiled, and purchased as a slave.

[The other creature had already fallen into the second male place in the state, and was set apart for grand vizier. He afterwards resisted this disposal of events, but had his hair pulled until he yielded.] "Shall I not be jealous?" Miss Bule inquired, casting down her eyes.

"Zobeide, no," I replied, "you will ever be the favorite sultana; the first place in my heart, and on my throne, will be ever yours."

Miss Bule, upon that assurance, consented to propound the idea to her seven beautiful companions. It occurring to me in the course of the same day, that we knew we could trust a grinning and good-natured soul called Tabby, who was the serving-drudge of the house, and had no more figure than one of the beds, and upon whose face there was always more or less black-lead, I slipped into Miss Bule's hand after supper, a note to that effect: dwelling on the black-lead as being in a manner deposited by the finger of Providence, pointing Tabby out for Mesrour, the celebrated chief of the blacks of the harem. There were difficulties in the formation of the desired institution, as there are in all combinations. The other creature showed himself of a low character, and, when defeated in aspiring to the throne, pretended to have conscientous scruples about prostrating himself before the caliph; wouldn't call him Commander of the Faithful; spoke of him sliglitingly and inconsistently as a mere "chap;" said he, the other creature, "wouldn't play"—Play!—and was otherwise coarse and offensive. This meanness of disposition was, however, put down by the general indignation of an united seraglio, and I became blessed in the smiles of eight of the fairest daughters of men.

The smiles could only be bestowed when Miss Griffin was looking another way, and only then in a very wary manner, for there was a legend among the followers of the prophet that she saw with a little round ornament in the middle of the pattern on the back of her shawl. But