“It is certainly strange. You do not think that your father will have any objection to take her?” Amuba asked.
“Oh, no; he may say that he does not want any more servants in the house, but I am sure that when he sees her he will be pleased to have such a companion for Mysa. If it was my mother I do not know. Most likely she would say no; but when she hears that it has all been settled, she will not trouble one way or the other about it. I will write my father a letter telling him all about it, and send off one of the slaves with it at once. He can get back to-morrow, and it will gladden the old man’s heart to know that it is all arranged. I wish to tell my father, too, of my trouble.”
“What trouble?” Amuba asked in surprise. “You have told me nothing about anything troubling you.”
“Do you not understand, Amuba? I am in trouble because I struck the crocodile; it is an impious action, and yet what could I do?”
Amuba repressed an inclination to smile.
“You could do nothing else, Chebron, for there was no time to mince matters. He was going too fast for you to explain to him that he was doing wrong in carrying off a girl, and you therefore took the only means in your power of stopping him; besides, the blow you dealt him did him no injury whatever. It was Jethro and the hunter who killed him.”
“But had I not delayed his flight they could not have done so.”
“That is true enough, Chebron; but in that case he would have reached the water with his burden and devoured her at his leisure. Unless you think that his life is of much more importance than hers, I cannot see that you have anything to reproach yourself with.”
“You do not understand me, Amuba,” Chebron said pettishly. “Of course I do not think that the life of an ordinary animal is of as much importance as that of a human being; but the crocodiles are sacred, and misfortune falls upon those who injure them.”
“Then in that case, Chebron, misfortune must fall very heavily on the inhabitants of those districts where the crocodile is killed wherever he is found. I have not heard that pestilence and famine visit those parts of Egypt with more frequency than they do the districts where the crocodile is venerated.”