Mesrour, on being whispered to, began to shed
tears. "Bless you, my precious!" said that officer, turning to me;
"your Pa's took bitter bad!"
I asked, with a fluttered heart, "Is he very ill?"
"Lord temper the wind to you, my lamb!" said the good Mesrour,
kneeling down, that I might have a comforting shoulder for my head
to rest on, "your Pa's dead!"
Haroun Alraschid took to flight at the words; the Seraglio vanished;
from that moment, I never again saw one of the eight of the fairest
of the daughters of men.
I was taken home, and there was Debt at home as well as Death, and
we had a sale there. My own little bed was so superciliously looked
upon by a Power unknown to me, hazily called "The Trade," that a
brass coal-scuttle, a roasting-jack, and a birdcage, were obliged to
be put into it to make a Lot of it, and then it went for a song. So
I heard mentioned, and I wondered what song, and thought what a
dismal song it must have been to sing!
Then, I was sent to a great, cold, bare, school of big boys; where
everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy, without being
enough; where everybody, largo and small, was cruel; where the boys
knew all about the sale, before I got there, and asked me what I had
fetched, and who had bought me, and hooted at me, "Going, going,
gone!" I never whispered in that wretched place that I had been
Haroun, or had had a Seraglio: for, I knew that if I mentioned my
reverses, I should be so worried, that I should have to drown myself
in the muddy pond near the playground, which looked like the beer.
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