"Now I will tell you all my business, my brother," said Ofesi that night. "To-morrow I go back to my people with your good word, and I shall speak of you by day and night because of your noble heart."
"I also will have no rest," said Bosambo, "till I have journeyed all over this land, speaking about my wonderful brother Ofesi."
With a word Ofesi dismissed his counsellors, and Bosambo, accepting the invitation, sent away his headmen.
"Now I will tell you," said Ofesi.
And what he said, what flood of ego-oratory, what promises, what covert threats, provided Bosambo with reminiscences for long afterwards.
"Yet," he concluded, "though all things have moved to make me what I am, yet there is much I have to learn, and from none can I learn so well as from you, my brother."
"That is very true," said Bosambo, and meant it.
"Now," Ofesi went on to his peroration, "the king of the Akasava is dying and all men are agreed that I shall be king in his place, therefore I would learn to the utmost grain all the secrets of kingship. Therefore, since I cannot sit with you, I ask you, lord Bosambo, to give a home to Tolinobo, my headman, that he may sit for a year in the shadow of your wisdom and tell me the many beautiful things you say."
Bosambo looked thoughtfully at Tolinobo, the headman, a shifty fisherman promoted to that position, and somewhat deficient in sanity, as Bosambo judged.
"He shall sit with me," said Bosambo at length, "and be as my own son, sleeping in a hut by mine, and I will treat him as if he were my brother."