It was as
though all the years that had intervened were but a dream. Had
it not been for her clothing and the fact that she had grown in
stature she might well have believed it so. All was there as she
had left it--the new faces which supplanted some of the old were
of the same bestial, degraded type. There were a few young Arabs
who had joined The Sheik since she had been away. Otherwise all
was the same--all but one. Geeka was not there, and she found
herself missing Geeka as though the ivory-headed one had been a
flesh and blood intimate and friend. She missed her ragged little
confidante, into whose deaf ears she had been wont to pour her many
miseries and her occasional joys--Geeka, of the splinter limbs and
the ratskin torso--Geeka the disreputable--Geeka the beloved.
For a time the inhabitants of The Sheik's village who had not
been upon the march with him amused themselves by inspecting the
strangely clad white girl, whom some of them had known as a little
child. Mabunu pretended great joy at her return, baring her
toothless gums in a hideous grimace that was intended to be indicative
of rejoicing.
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