“Steady there: Ben Eddin’s.”
“Yes, Ben Eddin’s brother safely back to Cairo, that I may have an accident.”
“An accident?” said Sam, staring.
“Or a bad illness, so that the great Hakim may cure me. Hah! what a physician! It is noble—it is grand!”
“I say, do you mean all that?” said Sam.
“Mean it?” said the Sheikh wonderingly. “I have been seventy years in the world, and for forty of those years I have been taking travellers to see the wonders of my land; but I have never met another man like the Hakim, whom I could look up to as I do to him.”
“You do mean it?” said Sam, whose eyes glistened and looked moist. “Thank you, Mr Abrahams. You and me’s the best of friends for saying that. He is what you say—grand. You like him, and don’t half know him.”
“I know him to have a great heart, Mr Samuel,” said the old man warmly.
“Great heart, yes, and a big, broad chest; but it ain’t half big enough to hold it. Why, when my poor old mother was bad—dying of old age she was—I made bold to ask the doctor to go down to see her, meaning to pay him out of my savings, and feeling as I’d like the dear old girl to have the best advice. Down in the country she was, forty miles away.”
“How sad!” said the old Sheikh. “Two very long days’ journey.”