Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/348

 around, he's sent bournousesburnouses [sic] and red Morocco boots and tunics and brass belts and boxes and boxes of dates to every one of his department heads and foremen and"

Olivia interrupted plaintively: "Couldn't you stop talking about Papa—for just a little while, Mamma?"

"Yes, dear," her mother said soothingly. "It's a lovely sunset, and we ought to just watch it in silence. I never saw such colours in my life,—so many different shades and all! It's so interesting, I think, after reading 'The Garden of Allah', though I don't like that place much; it seems so creepy." She lowered her voice a little. "As I was saying, you can't do anything with him, Mrs. Shuler. I wanted him to take a little rest to-day—not he! He got to talking to a young couple in the garden here yesterday afternoon—Austrians or Polish or something, but they speak English, he said, as well as he does himself—and he took a fancy to them and sat with them after dinner in the coffee-room and told them all about what Africa really needs in the way of American machinery and so on;—you know his way. So to-day he got 'em to go off on a long camel ride with him. He had lunch taken along on some other camels to eat somewhere in the Desert—you never