Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/349

 saw anything more like a circus parade in your life, except it was so kind of wild looking it almost scared me. Heaven knows where they were going or when they'll be back! He"

Olivia interrupted again. "I give up!" she said, and she laughed. "Mrs. Shuler, if you expect to see what's left of a Desert sunset, you'd better come down to the roof with me and leave Mother up here. Papa bought her an absolutely impossible girdle of enormous clumps of carved amber and ebony in Touggourt, and she likes it. Sometimes she won't speak to him or of him at all; but just after he's got her something she likes you can't possibly stop her! You'd better come with me."

A moment later the door opening upon the gallery clanked and she could be heard descending the spiral stairway. At the same time, Ogle became aware of a vague commotion of sounds from the direction of a dried river bed on the edge of the oasis, and, looking that way, he beheld a cloud of dust, in the midst of which were glints of barbaric colour, gleamings of brass, and the tall shapes of camels.

Mrs. Tinker's voice sounded eagerly. "Look, Mrs. Shuler! There he is now! He's just getting back from the Desert."