"Furthermore, howadji, I am the bearer of gladly tidings which will make you to beshout yourself aloud for joyfulness and leap about and besclaim: 'Pretty fair!' and other words of a grand rapture. For the bird will sing gleesome dirges in your heart!"
"Well?" queried Kirby in no especial excitement. "I'm listening. But if the news is really so wonderful you surely took your time in bringing it. I've been here all evening, while you've stayed below there, trying to increase those fellaheens' stock of ignorance. What's the idea?"
"Oh, I prythee you, do not let my awayness beget your goat, howadji!" pleaded Najib, ever sensitive to any hint of reproof from his master. "It was that which made the grand tidings. If I had not of been where I have been this evening—and doing what I have done—there would not be any tidings at all. I made the tidings myself. Both of them. And I made them for you. Is it that I may now tell them to you, howadji?"
"Go ahead," adjured Kirby, humouring the wistful eagerness of the man.
"What's the news you have for me?"
"It is more than just a 'news,' howadji," corrected Najib with jealous regard for shades of meaning. "It is a tidings. And it is this: You and my poor self and the fellaheen and even those hell-selected pashalik soldiers—we are all to be rich. Most especially you, howadji. Wealthiness bewaits us all. No longer shall any of us be downward and outward from povertude. No more shall any of us toil early and belatedly. We shall all live in easiness of hours and with much payment. Inshallah! Alhandulillah!" he concluded, his rising excitement for once bursting the carefully nourished bounds of English and overflowing into Arabic expletive.
Noting his own lapse into his native language, he looked sheepishly at Kirby, as though hoping the American had not heard the break. Then, with mounting eagerness, Najib struck the climax of his narrative.
"To speak with a briefness, howadji," he proclaimed grandiloquently. "We have all stroked ourselfs!"
"You've all done—what?" asked the puzzled Kirby.
"Not we alone, howadji," amended Najib, "but you also! We would not berich ourselves and leave you outward in the plan. It is you also who are to stroke yourself. And—"
"For the love of Heaven!" exclaimed Kirby in sudden loss of patience.
"What are you driving at? What do you mean about 'stroking yourselves'?
Say it in Arabic. Then perhaps I can find what you mean."