The boy looked up, and fell to staring at my outlandish attire, but presently reddened and turned his head, as if he knew that he was not behaving prettily.
"Dear neighbour," said the girl, with the most solemn countenance of a child playing at keeping shop, "what tobacco is it you would like ?" "Latakia," quoth I, feeling as if I were assisting at a child's game, and wondering whether I should get anything but make-believe.
But the girl took a dainty little basket from a shelf beside her, went to a jar, and took out a lot of tobacco and put the filled basket down on the counter before me, where I could both smell and see that it was excellent Latakia.
"But you haven't weighed it," said I, "and--and how much am I to take ?" "Why," she said, "I advise you to cram your bag, because you may be going where you can't get Latakia.

Where is your bag ?" I fumbled about, and at last pulled out my piece of cotton print which does duty with me for a tobacco pouch.

But the girl looked at it with some disdain, and said-- "Dear neighbour, I can give you something much better than that cotton rag." And she tripped up the shop and came back presently, and as she passed the boy whispered something in his ear, and he nodded and got up and went out.

The girl held up in her finger and thumb a red morocco bag, gaily embroidered, and said, "There, I have chosen one for you, and you are to have it: it is pretty, and will hold a lot." Therewith she fell to cramming it with the tobacco, and laid it down by me and said, "Now for the pipe: that also you must let me choose for you; there are three pretty ones just come in." She disappeared again, and came back with a big-bowled pipe in her hand, carved out of some hard wood very elaborately, and mounted in gold sprinkled with little gems.

It was, in short, as pretty and gay a toy as I had ever seen; something like the best kind of Japanese work, but better.
"Dear me!" said I, when I set eyes on it, "this is altogether too grand for me, or for anybody but the Emperor of the World.