"She ees so little!" he said wistfully. "And the body of my parent--could I let it lie and rot in the so hot sun? Ah, no; Miss Tish, Miss Liz, Miss Ag,--not so. To-day I take back my ticket, get the money, and send it to my sister. She will bury my parent, and then--she comes to this so great America, the land of my good friends!"
There was a moment's silence. Then Aggie sneezed!
IV
I shall pass over the next month, with its unpleasantnesses; over Charlie Sands's coming one evening with a black tie and, on the strength of having killed a dog with his machine, asking for money to bury it, and bring another one from Syria! I shall not more than mention Hannah, who kept Tish physically comfortable and well fed and mentally wretched, having a teakettle of boiling water always ready if Tufik came to the apartment; I shall say nothing of our success in getting him employment in the foreign department of a bank, and his ending up by washing its windows; or of the position Tish got him as elevator boy in her hospital, where he jammed the car in some way and held up four surgeons and three nurses and a patient on his way to the operating-room--until the patient changed his mind and refused to be operated on.
Aggie had a brilliant idea about the census--that he could make the census reports in the Syrian district. To this end she worked for some time, coaching Tufik for the examination, only to have him fail--fail absolutely and without hope. He was staying in the Syrian quarter at that time, on account of Hannah; and he brought us various tempting offers now and then--a fruit stand that could be bought for a hundred dollars; a restaurant for fifty; a tailor's shop for twenty-five. But, as he knew nothing of fruits or restaurants or tailoring, we refused to invest. Tish said that we had been a good while getting to it, but that we were being businesslike at last. We gave the boy nine dollars a week and not a penny more; and we refused to buy any more of his silly linens and crocheted laces. We were quite firm with him.
And now I come to the arriving of Tufik's little sister--not that she was really little. But that comes later.
Tufik had decided at last on what he would be in our so great America. Once or twice, when he was tired or discouraged, Tish had taken him out in her machine, and he had been thrilled--really thrilled. He did not seem able to learn how to crank it--Tish's car is hard to crank--but he learned how to light the lamps and to spot a policeman two blocks away. Several times, when we were going into the country, Tish took him because it gave her a sense of security to have a man along.