Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/212

 to accept this as a solution, the door leading into the cellar swung on its stiff hinges and a small Arab boy came down the stone steps. He wore a kind of smock, ragged and dirty; his legs and feet were bare, and probably had been since the hour of his birth. Perched rakishly on the top of his shaven poll was a dilapidated fez minus the tassel, the stem of which stood up like that of an apple. He was sore-eyed but flyless, his particular bevy of flies having rebelled, doubtless, against the possibility of being immured in darkness. The Cairo fly is a firm believer in sunshine.

The boy carried a loaf of bread under one arm and a water-jar under the other. The water-jar was like those William had often admired on the heads of the graceful balancing Egyptian women. The boy approached William and stared; his glance was neither bold nor timorous, only mildly curious. The boy looked at him quite as William would have looked at a strange fish in the Battery Aquarium at home. Having satisfied his eyes, the boy nonchalantly dropped the bread to the ground and held the water-jar against William's swollen lips. William drank like a spent race-horse. Next the boy offered the bread, but William shook his head.

"Speak English?" he demanded, thickly.

The boy dropped the bread again, rose and walked to the stairs, which he began to mount. He could not have worn a more stolid expression had he been deaf and dumb.

"Hey, come back here!"