"Who's been stroking your chin with a feather, pasha ?" he continued, his eye piercing the other like a gimlet.
"It was an amusing tale I heard at Assiout, effendi," was Higli's abashed and surly reply.
"Oh, at Assiout!" rejoined Lacey.

"Yes, they tell funny stories at Assiout.

And when were you at Assiout, pasha ?" "Two days ago, effendi." "And so you thought you'd tell the funny little story to Nahoum as quick as could be, eh?
He likes funny stories, same as you--damn, nice, funny little stories, eh ?" There was something chilly in Lacey's voice now, which Higli did not like; something much too menacing and contemptuous for a mere man-of-all-work to the Inglesi.

Higli bridled up, his eyes glared sulkily.
"It is but my own business if I laugh or if I curse, effendi," he replied, his hand shaking a little on the stem of the narghileh.
"Precisely, my diaphanous polyandrist; but it isn't quite your own affair what you laugh at--not if I know it!" "Does the effendi think I was laughing at him ?" "The effendi thinks not.

The effendi knows that the descendant of a hundred tigers was laughing at the funny little story, of how the two cotton-mills that Claridge Pasha built were burned down all in one night, and one of his steamers sent down the cataract at Assouan.