“Animals! What kind of animals?”
“Well, crocodiles, water lizards, snakes, and, at any rate, frogs; and they bite people, and I’m terribly afraid of all of them.”
“Oh, well,” said Keejeepaa, “do the best you can in the stream; but rub yourself well with earth, and, for goodness’ sake, scrub your teeth well with sand; they are awfully dirty.”
So the man obeyed, and soon made quite a change in his appearance.
Then the gazelle said: “Here, hurry up and put on these things. The sun has gone down, and we ought to have started before this.”
So the man dressed himself in the fine clothes the sultan had sent, and then he mounted the horse, and they started; the gazelle trotting on ahead.
When they had gone some distance, the gazelle stopped, and said, “See here: nobody who sees you now would suspect that you are the man who scratched in the dust heap yesterday. Even if we were to go back to our town the neighbors would not recognize you, if it were only for the fact that your face is clean and your teeth are white. Your appearance is all right, but I have a caution to give you. Over there, where we are going, I have procured for you the sultan’s daughter for a wife, with all the usual wedding gifts. Now, you must keep quiet. Say nothing except, ‘How d’ye do?’ and ‘What’s the news?’ Let me do the talking.”
“All right,” said the man; “that suits me exactly.”
“Do you know what your name is?”
“Of course I do.”