Djimlah, placing both her little hands on the floor, salaamed, and then walked up to her grandmother, who, magnificently attired in her orientalism, sat cross-legged on a hard sofa, which ran around three sides of the room.
"Here, grandmother, here is a Christian child. The effendi, her father, is out with grandfather, and he has lent her to me."
I stood still, quite uncertain what was the proper thing for me to do. I had never before come so near to a Turkish lady; and this one, with her deeply dyed finger-nails, and her indoor veils, and her hundreds of diamonds, distracted all my previous education in decorum. I merely stared.
"Welcome, little hanoum," she said, after she, too, had stared at me. "We shall do our best to make your stay among us seem like a happy minute."
I picked up my little skirts and made her a European curtsy. She was childishly delighted with it, and I was made to repeat it before every lady in the room, who sat in her magnificence, cross-legged on the divan.
There were many, and by the time I finished my curtsies, and told my name and my age, and how I had learned Turkish, and where I lived, I felt quite at home, and when the old lady made us sit by her, and gave us such quantities of candy as I had never been permitted
