In a few minutes a
fire was blazing, and the wallet of provisions brought out.
"I wish I had a cup of coffee to offer you, Annie," Dick said, as he
poured her out some wine and water, "but we must wait, for that, until
we get down to Tripataly."
"I have forgotten all about coffee, Dick, and what it tastes like. The
white girls used to talk about it, and say how they longed for a cup.
It seems, to me, funny to drink anything hot. I have never tasted
anything but water, that I can remember, until you gave me that wine
yesterday."
"It is very nice, and very refreshing. There is another drink that is
coming into fashion. It is called tea. I have tasted it a few times,
but I don't like it as well as coffee, and it is much more expensive."
"The sultan says that all the English get drunk, and there used to be
pictures of them on the walls. They used to make me so angry."
"I don't say that no English get drunk, Annie, because there is no
doubt that some do. But it is very far from being true of the great
proportion of them. Tippoo only says it to excite the people against
us, because, now that he has made them all Mohammedans, they cannot
drink wine--at any rate, openly. When I bought these two bottles, the
trader made a great mystery over it, and if I had not given him a sign
he understood, and which made him believe that I was a Hindoo and not
a Mussulman, he would not have admitted that he kept it at all.
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