Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/527

 on and lilac and purple; in robes of white cloth and tunics of embroidered saffron; their finger nails were stained with henna and their feet thrust loosely into embroidered slippers; their turbans, nodding together, were like a bed of immense flowers. With them there were two or three dapper men in European clothes and fezzes, and two or three others, hawk-nosed and olive-skinned, in enormous green trousers and embroidered short green jackets—immaculate, scented men whose eyelids were blackened with kohl.

They wished Tinker to buy sapphires and diamonds and emeralds and rubies and ivory and fine rugs and embroideries and brocades and carved amber and carved jade and carved crystal and old silver inlaid with gold, and old copper inlaid with silver, and glass and perfumes and curious bird-cages and ostrich feathers and curved daggers and tasselled spears and round steel shields and cigarette-holders, a foot long, and burnouses and beaten brass and ebony stools inlaid with mother-of-pearl. He had already bought some quantity of all of these things during the day; but the merchants had called, hoping that he would buy more, and the courier was trying to make them understand that at the moment he couldn't, as he was now in the bath; and that after