followed her into a sumptuously furnished apartment, where they found two other ladies as beautiful as the first; and with them was a porter—an amusing fellow, as full of quips and cranks as he was of wine—who had been entertaining them with joke and song and dance. The ladies smiled upon the three merchants, and welcomed them graciously, setting food and wine before them, and bidding them join in their merriment.
For a while the porter, who, like the three merchants, had come unbidden, but had been made welcome because of his versatility and ready wit in entertaining, kept the company in constant laughter, so that the Khalifeh said to Ja'far, "Verily, O Vizier, we should like this fellow's head and all it contains. Nay, O Mesrur," he added, turning to his Executioner, "I want not his head without the rest of him. He shall be my wag." "O King of the Age," answered the Grand Vizier, "I hear, and obey." Meanwhile, the porter continued to amuse them, but at length he became so intoxicated that his efforts to amuse were unsuccessful, whereat the entertainment flagged. "It seems to me," said the Khalifeh, "that these three ladies are no ordinary persons; perchance they have a history. Ask them to entertain us with their various stories." Accordingly, the Vizier singled out the eldest and put the question to her. But she liked it not, and, with a clouded brow, led him to the door, on the lintel of which she pointed out an inscription: "Ask not what doth not concern thee, lest thou hear what may not please thee." Ja'far returned and informed the Khalifeh of this, which only served to increase his curiosity. While he was planning a way with the Vizier to induce them to tell their history, there came a knock at the door. One of the
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