Montenegrins forced
acceptance of their notes by corporal punishment, paper was worth
nothing. To get the silver we went into a general store and sold a
sovereign.

[Illustration: JO AND MR. SUMA IN THE SCUTARI BAZAAR.]

While we were waiting for the money-changer, two Miridite women came in.
They had short hair dyed black, white coarse linen chemises with
large sleeves, embroidered zouaves, white skirts with front and back
aprons lavishly embroidered, striped trousers, and stockings knitted on
great diagonal patterns.

One of them told Suma that their village was in possession of Essad
Pacha, that all their husbands had fled, and were still fighting in the
hills.

Suma, for a joke, asked her what she thought of Jo. Passing her eyes
over Jo's uninflated frame, she hesitated, but was urged to speak the
truth.

"I think she is forty," she remarked; and then somehow Jo was not quite
pleased.

The midday heat being overwhelming we took a cab and drove back along
two kilometres of dusty road. A veiled woman stopped the coachman,
asking him to give her tired little girl a lift. Jehu refused, through
awe of us; but we insisted on taking her, and begged the woman to come
in too. Jo held out her hands, but the woman shrank back horrified,
though obviously worn out with the heat.

"That is a pity," laughed Suma. "I hoped she would do it. It would have
been a new experience for me."

Jo confided to him her burning desire to enter a harem, but as he had no
Mahommedan friends he thought the possibility remote.

Two more bourgeois women passed. Jan photographed them, but not before
they hid their faces with umbrellas. Even the Christian men are
intensely jealous, and their women have some Turkish ideals. We spent
the afternoon sketching outside a barber's shop, coffee being brought to
us on a hanging tray with a little fire on it to keep the coffee warm.
Opposite was a shop which combined the trades of blacksmith and
fishmonger. It seemed the strangest mixture.

We dined with the Frenchman. He was a queer fellow, seeming only
interested in economies, his digestion and his old age; and he discussed
the possible places where an old man might live in comfort. Egypt, he
dismissed: too hot, and an old man does not want to travel. The Greek
islands had earthquakes. Corfu, he had heard, was depressing; while in
the Canaries there was sometimes a wind and one might catch cold. We
suggested "heaven," and he looked hurt. He had b