It was quite possible that he might have been a descendant, a
son, or even a grandson, of the servants whose friendly faces had been
familiar to me in my early childhood. As a matter of fact he had no such
claim on my consideration. He was the product of some village near by
and was there on his promotion, having learned the service in one or two
houses as pantry boy. I know this because I asked the worthy V---- next
day. I might well have spared the question. I discovered before long
that all the faces about the house and all the faces in the village:
the grave faces with long mustaches of the heads of families, the downy
faces of the young men, the faces of the little fair-haired children,
the handsome, tanned, wide-browed faces of the mothers seen at the doors
of the huts, were as familiar to me as though I had known them all from
childhood and my childhood were a matter of the day before yesterday.
The tinkle of the traveller's bells, after growing louder, had faded
away quickly, and the tumult of barking dogs in the village had calmed
down at last. My uncle, lounging in the corner of a small couch, smoked
his long Turkish chibouk in silence.
"This is an extremely nice writing-table you have got for my room," I
remarked.
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