take?"

"Why," she said, "I advise you to cram your bag, because you may be
going where you can't get Latakia. Where is your bag?"

I fumbled about, and at last pulled out my piece of cotton print
which does duty with me for a tobacco pouch. But the girl looked at
it with some disdain, and said -

"Dear neighbour, I can give you something much better than that
cotton rag." And she tripped up the shop and came back presently,
and as she passed the boy whispered something in his ear, and he
nodded and got up and went out. The girl held up in her finger and
thumb a red morocco bag, gaily embroidered, and said, "There, I have
chosen one for you, and you are to have it: it is pretty, and will
hold a lot."

Therewith she fell to cramming it with the tobacco, and laid it down
by me and said, "Now for the pipe: that also you must let me choose
for you; there are three pretty ones just come in."

She disappeared again, and came back with a big-bowled pipe in her
hand, carved out of some hard wood very elaborately, and mounted in
gold sprinkled with little gems. It was, in short, as pretty and gay
a toy as I had ever seen; something like the best kind of Japanese
work, but better.

"Dear me!" said I, when I set eyes on it, "this is altogether too
grand for me, or for anybody but the Emperor of the World. Besides,
I shall lose it: I always lose my pipes."