ly for a customer. Walking toward
one of these turbaned merchants, Kitty said, with a queer attempt at
dignity, "Please show me some shawls."

But this clearly spoken sentence was all lost on the foreign merchant, to
whom English was an unknown language.

"Anni mush ariff," said the man, puffing away at his pipe, and
deliberately settling himself among his cozy cushions, as if for a long
and dreamy nap.

Kitty, of course, did not understand Arabic, and the words, which really
signified, "I don't understand," sounded to her unpracticed ears like "I
am a _sheriff_!" a word which was always associated in the little
runaway's mind with policemen, a class of persons who were to Kitty
objects of tyranny and terror.

"Oh, dear," whispered Kitty, "if he is a sheriff, may be he'll arrest me
and lock me up." So saying she fled from the presence of the astonished
merchant, and darted round a corner through a motley crowd of donkeys,
camels, and beggars blind and maimed. And now, her momentary fright over,
she entered a still more narrow way, where were stalls of glittering
diamonds set in every imaginable form, and gems of all sorts and sizes,
arranged in brilliant order. Kitty forgot everything in her admiration. "I
mean to buy a diamond pin. I just do!" she exclaimed, and, accosting the
man, asked the price of a huge crescent of gems.

"Allah!" cried the man, rousing from his languor. And then, in his own
language, he said to Kitty: "Little lady, where are you going? Are your
papa and mamma gone?"

Kitty looked silently and wonderingly at the kind-hearted merchant a
moment, and then her little mind began to realize that she was among a
strange people who could not understand a word that she might say. The
tears began to come in the gray eyes, and turning, she said, "I will go
home." But which way? Her little head grew bewildered, and, to crown all,
an immense camel stalking along with silent tread nearly stepped on her
little foot. She cried in earnest now, and the merchant kindly lifted her
up beside him on a soft, Turkish rug, right in the midst of the flashing
gems.

Quite a crowd had gathered now, listening eagerly while the man pictured
in earnest language the position of the lost child. But none knew little
Kitty; not a soul could speak to her in all that motley crowd of camel
drivers, donkey boys, beggars, milkmen with their goats, merchants and
dark-eyed women wrapped in their mantles and veils. There was none to