Page:Harris Dickson--Old Reliable in Africa.djvu/213

, yet exceedingly beautiful. "I'll take that one," said the Colonel, looking it over for the price mark. "What is the price, Reinhardt? You'll find it in that letter."

"No, the letter say for me to get most price—it is always so."

The psychological moment had arrived for Mahomet Mansour. Sternly he questioned Ibrahim, rolled his eyes in horror, and stamped his foot and interpreted between buyer and seller. "Ibrahim say hundred piaster. Too much. Bad blume, very bad. I say, Ibrahim, you pay five piaster, no more. It is a robbery for five piaster, that blume."

"Five piasters make one shilling," Reinhardt explained; "same as the twenty-five cent in your money."

"Is that a pretty good feather?" asked the Colonel.

"So-so, so-so," with a depreciating shrug.

Old Reliable kept peeping out of the Colonel's door, but he couldn't see all that was going on. He now came shuffling along the piazza with a flannel shirt in his hand. "Cunnel, you wants dese here kind o' shirts to go in dat littlest grip sack, don't you?"

"Yes. Tuck 'em in anywhere—don't bother me."

Zack side-stepped behind the Colonel's chair