"One day the agent saw me in the street, and eyed me so that I was frightened of him. He followed me home, and then sent a letter offering to buy me, but my mistress refused. Then the agent often came to the house, and I had to wait upon him. He told me that he wanted to buy me, and that if he did I should be better off than if I were free, but I refused to listen. When the agent was away his man Sarghîni used to come and try to buy me, but in vain; and when the agent returned he threatened to bring my mistress into trouble if she refused. At last she had to yield, and I cried when I had to go. 'Thou art sold to that man,' she said; 'but as thou art a daughter to me, he has promised to take care of thee and bring thee back whenever I wish.'
"Sarghîni took me out by one gate with the servants of the agent, who took care to go out with a big fat Jew by another, that the English consul should not see him go out with a woman. We rode on mules, and I wore a white cloak; I had not then begun to fast" (_i.e._ was not yet twelve years of age). "After two days on the road the agent asked for the key of my box, in which he found my fifteen dollars, tied up in a rag, and took them, but gave me back my clothes. We were five days travelling to Marrákesh, staying each night with a kaïd who treated us very well. So I came to the agent's house.
"There I found many other slave girls, besides men slaves in the garden. These were Ruby, bought in Saffi, by whom the agent had a daughter; and Star, a white girl stolen from her home in Sûs, who had no children; Jessamine the Less, another white girl bought in Marrákesh, mother of one daughter; Jessamine the Greater, whose daughter was her father's favourite, loaded with jewels; and others who cooked or served, not having children, though one had a son who died. There were thirteen of us under an older slave who clothed and fed us.
"When the bashador came to the house the agent shut all but five or six of us in a room, the others waiting on him. I used to have to cook for the bashador, for whom they had great receptions with music and dancing-women. Next door there was a larger house, a fandak, where the agent kept public women and boys, and men at the door took money from the Muslims and Nazarenes who went there. The missionaries who lived close by know the truth of what I say.