‘So I will,’ replied he.
Then he and her mother took her upstairs and hid her in a cupboard, where she stayed for a whole month, only going out to walk when all the world was asleep.
Meanwhile Dschemil had returned to his own home, where his father and mother, his brothers and neighbours, greeted him joyfully.
‘When did you come back?’ said they, ‘and have you found Dschemila?’
‘No, I searched the whole world after her, and could hear nothing of her.’
‘Did you part company with the man who started with you?’
‘Yes; after three days he got so weak and useless he could not go on. It must be a month by now since he reached home again. I went on and visited every castle, and looked in every house. But there were no signs of her; and so I gave it up.’
And they answered him: ‘We told you before that it was no good. An ogre or an ogress must have snapped her up, and how can you expect to find her?’
‘I loved her too much to be still,’ he said.
But his friends did not understand, and soon they spoke to him again about it.