Explore "Al-Tawajin, or "the Pipkins"" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On the appointed day of the next week, when, with the hour of public executions, the noonday amusements of the city come to an end, and the citizens betake themselves to the early afternoon's repose, the seven boys were once more seated in the presence of their uncle, whom they discovered in a radiant humour.
He welcomed them so warmly that they imagined for a moment he might be upon the point of offering them sherbet, sweetmeats, or even money; they were undeceived, however, when the excellent but extremely wealthy old man, drawing his purse lovingly through his fingers, ordered to have poured out for each of them by a slave a further draught of delicious cold water, put himself at his ease for a long story, and resumed his tale: