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 like a jack-knife, and shot the visitor neatly out of the saddle and directly at the feet of the princess who between laughter and tears, picked her up and hugged her to her breast.

The older woman broke into a hectic torrent of speech; a mad mixture of extravagant terms of endearment—“Little pink-and-blue sweetmeat!” she called the princess, “little melon seed of delight! Little ivory moon of much sweetness! O thou soul of my soul! Thou blood of my liver!”—and bewailings of that cruel, stony Fate which had forced her, a woman of respectable years, respectable life, respectable ancestry, and virginal innocence, to leave the “fat and warm security of the harem, to launch myself upon the bitter, bitter waters of adventure and fatigue and extremely bad food, to cross the chilly mountain peaks of Afghanistan, to have rough, swine-fed Kabuli dogs crack low jokes to the detriment of my nose, to wrestle the many, weary miles with a stinking dromedary whose father was a wart and whose mother a most improper smell!”

“Ahee—ahoo—ahai—and ten thousand first-class devils!” she shrilled, giving herself a violent blow across her flat, heaving chest. “And all because of that great and most evil grandson of a cockroach, Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, governor of the western marches!”

And she called the governor a name that reflected fully as much her own morality and upbringing as on the other's female relatives.

On she raced in a mad, lashing jumble of words, while the servants, who saw Hector's amused astonishment,