"Mother!" cried Aladdin, as the girl fainted in his arms, "come quickly. The young lady has fainted."
The good woman needed no second bidding. She hastened to his side, and the limp form of the young girl was carried in her strong, motherly arms into the little back room behind the tailor shop, which formed their only home. Shortly afterward the old gentleman came also, ushered in by Aladdin.
"She is safe?" cried he, with an anxious glance at the prostrate form of his daughter.
"Perfectly so, sir," replied Aladdin's mother. "She has only fainted. Won't you sit down, sir?" she added. "You look a little shaken up yourself."
"Thank you," said the old gentleman, gazing around the room vainly in search of a chair. "Ah--what shall I sit down on, madam?"
"Try the stove, sir," laughed Aladdin. "It may warm it up a bit."
The old man gazed frowningly at the boy, not relishing such levity at so serious a moment, and Aladdin, slightly embarrassed by his own frivolity, tried to cover his confusion by seizing the lamp that had fallen from the package, and polishing its highly oxidized surface by rubbing it on the patched knee of his trousers. And then a strange thing came to pass. At the moment of the first attrition between his knee and the little brass lamp the room seemed to fill with a gray mist and in its gathering depths Aladdin perceived the huge figure of a blackamoor gradually taking shape.
"What the dickens!" muttered the lad to himself as the strange apparition rose up before him, rubbing his eyes to make sure that he saw clearly. "What do you want?" he added, springing to his feet as the genie approached him.
"I have come in response to your summons," replied the blackamoor. "Give your orders, sir!"
Aladdin grinned broadly at this. The idea of his ever giving orders to anybody seemed so very absurd. Nevertheless, he fell in with the spirit of the hour.
"All right, Sambo," he returned. "Get this gentleman a chair. There may be an extra one up-stairs in the music-room."
The blackamoor disappeared for an instant and shortly returned bringing with him the desired piece of furniture.
"Thank you," said the old gentleman, as he took his seat with an uneasy glance around him. The situation was not altogether without alarming features. As for Aladdin, you could have knocked him over with a palm-leaf fan, so astonished was he at this unusual development.