But why he placed his bank book, which was no longer worth a straw, into that bottom drawer, I could not guess. With these preparations, however, we shouldered our boxes, and in an hour we were in the suburbs. We foot it along then, until we reach a row of cottages not far from the railway station. ‘Will you knock at one of these doors,’ I asked. And he, ‘I do not feel like chaffering and bargaining this morning.’ ‘Why then did you come out,’ I urged. And he, in an air of nonchalance, ‘Only for the walk.’ And so, we pursued our way in the Bronx, until we reached one of our favourite spots, where a sycamore tree seemed to invite us to its ample shade.
“Here, Khalid, absentminded, laid down his box and sat upon it, and I stretched my limbs on the grass. But of a sudden, he jumped up, opened the bottom drawer of his case, and drew from it the bottle. It is quite in order now, I mused; but ere I had enjoyed the thought, Khalid had placed his box at a little distance, and, standing there beside it, bottle in hand, delivered himself in a semi-solemn, semi-mocking manner of the following: ‘This is the oil,’ I remember him saying, ‘with which I anoint thee—the extreme unction I apply to