Egyptian flower girls, veiled to the eyes, plied their trade. A conjurer pushed his way amid the gazers, a hen’s egg sticking in his eye and another clinging behind his jaw. The rhythm of the Midway sounded from two drums slung at either side of a gaudily caparisoned camel, and was sung monotonously from the booth of the much-vaunted Oriental sweetmeat:—
"Alla gooda bum-bum, Vera nice candy, Beautifula bum-bum, Vera good candy,"
repeated _ad libitum_ by the swarthy Arab presiding.
Mildred and Jack glanced into the showcases as they passed onward, the former restraining her companion from purchasing specimens of brasswork, filigree silver, ornaments, and embroidery. But once Mildred exclaimed with pleasure over a small hanging-lamp of dull silver.
"I will take it," said Jack to the instantly voluble salesman.
"Not for me; no don’t," protested his companion.
"You must have a souvenir," returned Van Tassel, smiling over the word which had grown hateful by iteration to all Fair-goers.
"Please don’t get it," said the girl; but the very tassel on their Oriental’s fez was active in his zeal to wrap up the parcel for this gentleman who did not bargain.
The foreign fashion of changing a price by the beating-down process was one with which many Americans amused themselves when they found it was expected; but Jack was in that state of mind when an article which had the rare fortune to please Mildred was above rubies.
She dissembled her satisfaction, however. "If I had let you buy everything you have started to since we came into the street, we should have had to charter a donkey," she began.
"Look ou-at—look ou-at for Yanka Doodoo," bawled Achmet, the donkey boy, directly upon them.
"I don’t like to feel that I mustn’t admire anything," finished the girl as Jack stepped between her and the little quadruped who carried a much-excited and curled maiden of five.
"I like this lamp so much, I don’t know that I shall let you have it," responded Van Tassel serenely, as he took the package. "Look up, Mildred. What a deep blue the sky gets between those irregular roofs."
"Only one of us can look up at a time, while the other keeps watch of the menagerie."
"There appears to be an extra crowd yonder," remarked Jack.