Then you can enter. If none are about,
you can follow me straight in."
Hossein now set about the disguises. A light was struck, and both Tim
and Charlie were shaved, up to the line which the turban would cover.
Charlie's whiskers, which were somewhat faint, as he was still under
twenty-one years old, gave but little trouble. Tim, however, grumbled
at parting with his much more bushy appendages. The shaven part of the
heads, necks, and faces were then rubbed with a dark fluid, as were
the arms and legs.
They were next wrapped in dark blue clothes, in peasant fashion, and
turbans wound round their heads. Hossein then, examining them
critically, announced that they would pass muster anywhere.
"I feel mighty quare," Tim exclaimed; "and it seems to me downright
ondacent, to be walking about with my naked legs."
Charlie laughed.
"Why, Tim, you are accustomed to see thousands of men, every day, with
nothing on but a loincloth."
"Yes, yer honor, but then they're hathens, and it seems natural for
them to do so; but for a dacent boy to go walking about in the
streets, with a thing on which covers no more than his shirt, is
onnatural altogether. Mother of Moses, what a shindy there would be,
in the streets of Cork, if I were to show myself in such a state!"
Charlie now lay down for a sleep till morning; while Tim, who had had
three hours' repose, settled himself for a comfortable chat with
Hossein, to whom sleep appeared altogether unnecessary.
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