"Please to walk this way."

It _did_ please his auditor to walk in the designated direction,
and he entered the room, when the eye spoke again to a very low
accompaniment of the voice, as if he was afraid he might damage
that organ by playing on it too loudly.

The anxious visitor looked for the Princess, but not seeing her,
or the slaves with the pots of jewels, and observing, also, that
the chairs were not too luxuriously gorgeous for people to sit
on, he sat down.

A single glance convinced him that the Princess could have had no
opportunity to carry off her jewels from her eastern home, or
that she must have spent the proceeds before she furnished her
present domicile. An iron bedstead, a small cooking-stove, four
chairs, and a table, on which the breakfast crockery stood
unwashed, was the amount of the furniture. A dirty slatternly
young woman of about twenty-three years, with filthy hands and
uncombed hair, and whose clothes looked as if they had been
tossed on with a pitchfork, seated herself in one of the chairs
and commenced conversation--not in Persian. It was one o'clock,
P.M., but she attempted an apology for the unmade bed, the
unswept room, the unwashed breakfast dishes, and the untidy
appearance of everything. Before she had concluded her fruitless
explanation, the boy with the variegated eye suddenly came from
a closet which the customer had not noticed and was unprepared
for, and said, in winning tones, "Please to walk in this room,"
which was done, with some fear and no little trembling, whereupon
the optical youth incontinently vanished.

At last, then, the imaginative visitor stood in the presence of
royalty, and beheld the wronged Princess of his heart. He was
about to drop on his bended knees to pay his premeditated homage,
but a hurried glance at the floor showed that such a course of
proceeding would result in the ineffaceable soiling of his best
pantaloons; so he stood sturdily erect.

Before he suffered his eyes to rest upon the peerless beauty who,
he was convinced, stood before him, he took a survey of the regal
apartment.

An unpainted pine table stood in the corner, a gaudily colored
shade was at the window, and an iron single bedstead upon which
the clothes had been hastily "spread up," and two chairs, on one
of which sat the enchantress, completed the list.

The Princess was attired in deep black, and a thick black veil,
reaching from her head to her waist, entirely concealed h