His son exclaimed excitedly: 'Mon bère est heureux, tu vois. If feut bas quitter. Il feut rester afec toi comme chef de serfice.'
CHAPTER XXVIII[ToC]
A DISAPPOINTMENT
Considering that I had bought a house and land exactly to my taste, and likely, as Rashîd declared, to raise our honour in the country, I felt that I had earned the right to take a holiday. Whenever I have done anything decisive it is my instinct to withdraw myself a little from the scene of action and inure myself by contemplation to the new position of affairs. Accordingly, having surveyed the house and land as owner, I set off with Rashîd upon a ten days' journey beyond the reach of telegrams and letters.
At the end of the ten days we rode into Beyrout, and put up at a little hostelry, which we frequented, built out on piers above the sea. There I found two letters waiting for me, one from the great Druze chief who sold to me my house and land.
'Never,' he wrote, 'have I had to endure such disrespect and ignominy. It is not at all what I expected from your friendship. In obedience to the Consul's order, I wrote express to the Khawâjah ——, my creditor, informing him that there had been some error and entreating him to send your cheque in to the British Consulate. I hope to God you have received it safely before this. My health has suffered from this huge indignity. I shall not long survive this cruel shame.'
The second letter was from Her Britannic Majesty's Consul-General, enclosing my cheque written to the order of the Armenian gentleman for the amount of the mortgage which he held upon my Druze friend's property, and adjuring me to pay a visit to the Consulate without delay.