"My age!"
screamed one: "why, what age do you take me for?" "Well," I answered
politely, "perhaps you might be sixty" (she looked seventy-five). "I
am only twenty-five," she said in a very hurt tone of voice. "Well
then," I said, "I congratulate you on your early marriage, for your
youngest daughter is seventeen, and she is working in my house. Anyway
it is really too late to work a miracle."
On another occasion I received a very equivocal compliment. A woman came
to me and begged for medicines, and described her symptoms. The doctor
was with me, but she did not know him. He said in French, "Do not give
her anything but a little effervescing magnesia. I won't have anything
to do with her; it is too late, and risks reputation." I did as he
bade me, simply not to seem unkind. The next day she was dead. Soon
afterwards a young man of about twenty came to me and said, "Ya Sitti,
will you give me some of that nice white bubbling powder for my
grandmother that you gave to Umm Saba the day before yesterday? She
is so old, and has been in her bed these three months, and will neither
recover nor die." "Oh thou wicked youth!" I answered; "begone from
my house! I did but give Umm Saba a powder to calm her sickness, for
it was too late to save her, and it was the will of Allah that she
should die."
I will here mention again my little Syrian maid, to whom I had taken a
fancy at Miss Wilson's Mission, where I first met her, and I took her
into my service.
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