"I am afraid," said I, "that you do not find all this as Oriental as you expected, Miss Dabstreak."
"Ah, no!" she sighed. "If by 'this' you mean the hotel, it is European, and unpleasantly so at that."
"I think it is a very good hotel; and this rice--what do you call it?--is very good, too," said John Carvel, who was tasting pilaff for the first time.
"Your carnal love of food always shocks me, John," murmured Chrysophrasia. "But I dare say there is a good deal that is Oriental on the other side. There, I am sure, we should be sitting on very precious carpets, and eating sweetmeats with golden spoons, while some fair young Circassian slave sang wild melodies and played upon a rare old inlaid lute."
"Yes," I answered. "I have dined with Turks in Stamboul."
"Oh, do describe it!" exclaimed Miss Dabstreak.
"We squatted on the floor around a tiny table, and we devoured ragouts of mutton and onions with our fingers," I said.
"How very disgusting!" Miss Dabstreak made an unæsthetic grimace, and looked at me with profound contempt.
"But I suppose they eat other things, Griggs?" asked John, laughing.
"Yes. But mutton and onions and pilaff are the staple of their consumption. They eat jams of all sorts. Sometimes soup is brought in in a huge bowl, and put down in the middle of the table. Then each one dips in his spoon in the order of precedence, and eats as much as he can. They will give you a dozen courses in half an hour, and they never speak at their meals if they can help it."
"Pigs!" exclaimed Chrysophrasia, whose delicacy did not always assert itself in her selection of epithets.
"No; I assure you," I objected, "they are nothing of the kind. They consider it cleaner to eat with their fingers, which they can wash themselves, than with forks, which are washed in a common bath of soapsuds by the grimy hands of a scullery maid. It is not so unreasonable."
"You have such a terrible way of putting things, Mr. Griggs!" exclaimed Mrs. Carvel in a tone of gentle protest. "But I dare say," she added, as though fearing lest her mild rebuke should have hurt my feelings,--"I dare say you are quite right."
"To tell the truth," I answered, "I am rather fond of the Turks."
"I have always noticed," remarked Madame Patoff, "that you Americans generally admire people who live under a despotic government. Americans all like Russia and Russians."