The Hidden Treasure
yet been done about it. Since I was leaving the next mornino,
I gave the two tomans, knowing well that they would never
be spent in the manner intended: but no doubt they would
buy food, and the boy seemed to stand a chance of recovering
with no doctor at all. After having the wound dressed, the
little family sat watching me at my dinner with humble envy.
The old man kept his quiet and admirable dignity, looking
without affectation, but only with a natural sadness into
space: the woman followed every mouthful I ate with her
eyes, until I could bear it no longer. My hosts gave her some
dinner at last: it was not for herself that she had broken the
tacit Eastern code of courteous aloofness. She watched the
boy feed with a sort of savage love, an animal ferocity,
choosing out for him the more succulent pieces of meat from
among the bits of bread in the bowl before him. It was by
no means an invalid's diet: but I reflected that he was not to
be killed by such trifles, or he would long ago have been dead,
and probably a good meal was what he needed more than
anything else. He ate and ate. And finally licked the
last taste off his fingers with a sigh. I had handed him a litde
toy watch, which gave him great happiness. He began to
talk in a high feverish voice, with a strange mixture of boyish-
ness and hard stoicism of the poor. He had two brothers,
porters in Baghdad, said he. He too would be a porter, if
he did not die.
" I do not mind dying," said he. " But I do not like to
think that my body rots and smells before I am dead."
" It will not do that," we said. " Do you not see how your
arm looks better since you have been washing it with the
red water?"
He looked at the poor stump with distaste. " God knows,"
said he. " But I shall never be able to shoot with a gun or cut
with a knife."