“This one does very well; it fits elegantly.  I like a glove that fits.  No, never mind, ma’am, never mind; I’ll put the other on in the street.  It is warm here.”

It was warm.  It was the warmest place I ever was in.  I paid the bill, and as I passed out with a fascinating bow I thought I detected a light in the woman’s eye that was gently ironical; and when I looked back from the street, and she was laughing all to herself about something or other, I said to myself with withering sarcasm, “Oh, certainly; you know how to put on kid gloves, don’t you?  A self-complacent ass, ready to be flattered out of your senses by every petticoat that chooses to take the trouble to do it!”

The silence of the boys annoyed me.  Finally Dan said musingly: 

“Some gentlemen don’t know how to put on kid gloves at all, but some do.”

And the doctor said (to the moon, I thought): 

“But it is always easy to tell when a gentleman is used to putting on kid gloves.”

Dan soliloquized after a pause: 

“Ah, yes; there is a grace about it that only comes with long, very long practice.”

“Yes, indeed, I’ve noticed that when a man hauls on a kid glove like he was dragging a cat out of an ash hole by the tail, he understands putting on kid gloves; he’s had ex—­”

“Boys, enough of a thing’s enough!  You think you are very smart, I suppose, but I don’t.  And if you go and tell any of those old gossips in the ship about this thing, I’ll never forgive you for it; that’s all.”

They let me alone then for the time being.  We always let each other alone in time to prevent ill feeling from spoiling a joke.  But they had bought gloves, too, as I did.  We threw all the purchases away together this morning.  They were coarse, unsubstantial, freckled all over with broad yellow splotches, and could neither stand wear nor public exhibition.  We had entertained an angel unawares, but we did not take her in.  She did that for us.

Tangier!  A tribe of stalwart Moors are wading into the sea to carry us ashore on their backs from the small boats.

CHAPTER VIII.

This is royal!  Let those who went up through Spain make the best of it —­these dominions of the Emperor of Morocco suit our little party well enough.  We have had enough of Spain at Gibraltar for the present.  Tangier is the spot we have been longing for all the time.  Elsewhere we have found foreign-looking things and foreign-looking people, but always with things and people intermixed that we were familiar with before, and so the novelty of the situation lost a deal of its force.  We wanted something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign—­foreign from top to bottom—­foreign from center to circumference—­foreign inside and outside and all around—­nothing anywhere about it to dilute its foreignness —­nothing to remind us of any other people or any other land under the