“Where’s Tish?” I asked.

“Not here yet.”

Something in Aggie’s tone made me look at her.  She was eyeing the bundle in her lap.

“I got a paler shade of ribbon this time,” I said, seeing she made no comment on the sheaf.  “It’s a better color for me if you’re going to make my Christmas present out of it this year again.  Where’s Tish’s wreath?”

“Here.”  Aggie pointed dispiritedly to the bundle in her lap and went on rocking.

“That!  That’s no wreath.”

In reply Aggie lifted the tissue paper and shook out, with hands that trembled with indignation, a lace-and-linen centerpiece.  She held it up before me and we eyed each other over it.  Both of us understood.

“Tish is changed, Lizzie,” Aggie said hollowly.  “Ask her for bread these days and she gives you a Cluny-lace fandangle.  On mother’s anniversary she sent me a set of doilies; and when Charlie Sands was in the hospital with appendicitis she took him a pair of pillow shams.  It’s that Syrian!”

Both of us knew.  We had seen Tish’s apartment change from a sedate and spinsterly retreat to a riot of lace covers on the mantel, on the backs of chairs, on the stands, on the pillows—­everywhere.  We had watched her Marseilles bedspreads give way to hem-stitched covers, with bolsters to match.  We had seen Tish go through a cold winter clad in a succession of sleazy silk kimonos instead of her flannel dressing-gown; terrible kimonos—­green and yellow and red and pink, that looked like fruit salads and were just as heating.

“It’s that dratted Syrian!” cried Aggie—­and at that Tish came in.  She stood inside the door and eyed us.

“What about him?” she demanded.  “If I choose to take a poor starving Christian youth and assist him by buying from him what I need—­what I need!—­that’s my affair, isn’t it?  Tufik was starving and I took him in.”

“He took you in, all right!” Aggie sniffed.  “A great, mustached, dirty, palavering foreigner, who’s probably got a harem at home and no respect for women!”

Tish glanced at my sheaf and at the centerpiece.  She was dressed as she always dressed on Mr. Wiggins’s day—­in black; but she had a new lace collar with a jabot, and we knew where she had got it.  She saw our eyes on it and she had the grace to flush.

“Once for all,” she snapped, “I intend to look after this unfortunate Syrian!  If my friends object, I shall be deeply sorry; but, so far as I care, they may object until they are purple in the face and their tongues hang out.  I’ve been sending my money to foreign missions long enough; I’m doing my missionary work at home now.”

“He’ll marry you!” This from Aggie.

Tish ignored her.  “His father is an honored citizen of Beirut, of the nobility.  The family is impoverished, being Christian, and grossly imposed on by the Turks.  Tufik speaks French and English as well as Mohammedan.  They offered him a high government position if he would desert the Christian faith; but he refused firmly.  He came to this country for religious freedom; at any moment they may come after him and take him back.”