"You," said McIntosh, slowly, "have not had that advantage; but, to outward
appearance, you do not seem possessed of a craving for strong drinks. On the
whole, I fancy that you are the luckier of the two. Yet I am not certain. You
are--forgive my saying so even while I am smoking your excellent tobacco--
painfully ignorant of many things."
We were sitting together on the edge of his bedstead, for he owned no chairs,
watching the horses being watered for the night, while the native woman was
preparing dinner. I did not like being patronized by a loafer, but I was his
guest for the time being, though he owned only one very torn alpaca-coat and a
pair of trousers made out of gunny-bags. He took the pipe out of his mouth, and
went on judicially:--"All things considered, I doubt whether you are the
luckier. I do not refer to your extremely limited classical attainments, or
your excruciating quantities, but to your gross ignorance of matters more
immediately under your notice. That for instance."--He pointed to a woman
cleaning a samovar near the well in the centre of the Serai. She was flicking
the water out of the spout in regular cadenced jerks.
"There are ways and ways of cleaning samovars. If you knew why she was doing
her work in that particular fashion, you would know what the Spanish Monk meant
when he said--
'I the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp--
In three sips the Aryan frustrate,
While he drains his at one gulp.
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