you say, it
is threatening for rain.'

'I'll lend you a waterproof, or even sell you one cheap. Come in,
sir--come in. Pray honour me.'

Congratulating himself on catching the spider, the fly followed him
within.

A quarter of an hour passed, in which he must buzz about the stock. It
seemed vastly difficult to veer round to the Sabbath through the web
of conversation the spider wove round him. Simeon Samuels' conception
of a marine-dealer's stock startled him by its comprehensiveness, and
when he was asked to admire an Indian shawl, he couldn't help
inquiring what it was doing there.

'Well,' explained Simeon Samuels, 'occasionally a captain or first
mate will come back to England, home, and beauty, and will have
neglected to buy foreign presents for his womenkind. I then remind him
of the weakness of womenkind for such trophies of their menfolks'
travel.'

'Excellent. I won't tell your competitors.'

'Oh, those cattle!' Simeon snapped his fingers. 'If they stole my
idea, they'd not be able to carry it out. It's not easy to cajole a
captain.'

'No, you're indeed a honeyed rascal,' thought the _Parnass_.

'I also do a brisk business in chutney,' went on Simeon. 'It's a thing
women are especially fond of having brought back to them from India.
And yet it's the last thing their menkind think of till I remind them
of it on their return.'

'_I_ certainly brought back none,' said the _Parnass_, smiling in
spite of himself.

'You have been in India?'

'I have,' replied the _Parnass_, with a happy inspiration, 'and I
brought back to my wife something more stimulating than chutney.'

'Indeed?'

'Yes, the story of the Beni-Israel, the black Jews, who, surrounded by
all those millions of Hindoos, still keep their Sabbath.'

'Ah, poor niggers. Then you've been half round the world.'

'_All_ round the world, for I went there and back by different routes.
And it was most touching, wherever I went, to find everywhere a colony
of Jews, and everywhere the Holy Sabbath kept sacred.'

'But on different days, of course,' said Simeon Samuels.

'Eh? Not at all! On the same day.'

'On the same day! How could that be? The day changes with every move
east or west. When it's day here, it's night in Australia.'

Darkness began to cloud the presidential brow.

'Don't you try to make black white!' he said angrily.

'It's you that are trying to make white black,' retorted Simeon
Samuels. 'Perhaps you don't know that I h