“Sixteen years!” exclaimed the Hadji, running his eye over the commanding figure and muscular limbs of the Arab youth. “It is impossible! Why, Antar himself at sixteen years had not a body and limbs like that. Young man,” he continued, bending his shaggy grey brows till they met, “you are deceiving me.”
“I never deceived any one,” said the youth haughtily; but his countenance instantly resumed its habitual frank expression, and he added, “If I wished to learn to deceive, it is not likely that I should begin with the most sagacious and experienced of all the white-beards in Alexandria.”
“True,” said the old man, smiling; “I did you wrong. But, Mashallah, you have made haste in your growth. If your brain has advanced as rapidly as your stature, you might pass for twenty summers. What can you do?”
“Little,” replied Hassan. “Almost nothing.”
“Nay, tell me that little,” said the merchant good-humouredly; “with a willing heart ’twill soon be more.”
“I can ride on camel or on horse, I can run, I can swim and dive, I can shoot and——” here he paused, and the merchant added—
“And I doubt not, from what my friend the Sheik writes, your hand is no stranger to the sword or lance; but, my son, all these acquirements, though useful in the desert, will not avail you much here—nevertheless, we will see. Inshallah, your lot shall be fortunate; you have a forehead of good omen. God is great—He makes the prince and the beggar—we are all dust.”
To this long speech of the worthy merchant Hassan only replied by repeating after him, “God is great.”
Hadji Ismael then turned to his chief clerk, and told him that, as the youth was a stranger in the town and intrusted to him by an old friend, he was to be lodged in the house, and arrangement to be made for his board.
It would seem that Hassan’s forehead of good omen had already exercised its influence over the chief clerk, for he offered without hesitation to take the youth under his own special charge, and to let him share his meals; an arrangement which was very agreeable to Hassan, who had begun to fear that he would be like a fish out of water—he, a stranger in that confused mass of bricks and bales, ships and levantines.