I was obliged to speak very seriously to
the Moon, and told her that these were bad words used by the little
gutter-boys in England when they had bad parents and did not know God.
Our dragoman, I regret to say, once took liberties with her. She
complained to me.
"O Lady, all the men want my lip and my breast. Hanna he pulled me, and
I told him, 'What you want? I am a girl of seventeen. I have to learn
how I shall walk. You know the Arab girl. Not even my brother kiss me
without leave. Wait till I run and tell Ya Sitti.'"
This frightened Hanna, a man like a little old walnut, with a wife and
children, and he begged her not to do so. But she came and told me, and
I replied:
"O Moon, the next time he does it, slap his face and scream, and I will
come down and ask him what he takes my house to be. He shall get more
than he reckons on."
There was a great deal of ill-feeling simmering between the Moslems and
Christians all this summer, and there were many squabbles between them.
Sometimes the Christians were to blame, and needlessly offended the
susceptibilities of the Moslems. I was always very careful about this,
and would not eat pig for fear of offending the Moslems and Jews, though
we were often short of meat, and I hungered for a good rasher of bacon.
I used to ride down to Zebedani, the next village to Bludan, to hear
Mass, attended by only one servant, a boy of twenty. The people loved
me, and my chief difficulty was to pass through the crowd that came to
kiss my hand or my habit, so I might really have gone alone.
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