ave chosen fabrics
three parts silk. I did not know that you were counting money.'

He was right. Throughout my stay in Syria, until that moment, I had
never counted money. Compared with England, living in the country was
absurdly cheap, and on my small allowance I had lived at ease. He
might quite reasonably have supposed me to be very wealthy. But I was
not in reasonable mood just then. I paid the bill, but in an angry
manner; and while I was still talking to him, the Cawwas arrived, and,
close upon his heels, Rashid in tears, to tell me that the carriage
was in waiting. The grief I felt at leaving Syria, at parting from
Rashid and our Sheytan and many friends took hold of me. Hurriedly I
said goodbye to the Mu'allim Costantin, and I am glad to say I changed
my tone at that last moment, and had the grace to bid him think no
more of the whole matter. But I shall carry to my grave the
recollection of his face of horror while I scolded, the look that told
his grief that he had been deceived in me.

I went and shoved the books into my luggage here and there, gave
Rashid orders to send on the clothes, took leave of my kind hosts, and
drove down in a hurry to the quay. It was not till some time after I
arrived in England that I realised that the volumes which he had
presented to me were a complete Bulac Edition of the _Thousand and One
Nights_--a valuable book--which is my greatest treasure.

Nor have I ever had the chance of thanking the giver in a manner
worthy of the gift, and wiping out the bad impression left by my
ill-temper, for a letter which I wrote from England never reached him
I am told, and when I next was in his country the Mu'allim Costantin
had gone where kindness, patience, courtesy, and all his other virtues
are, I hope, rewarded.

GLASGOW: W. COLLIN'S SONS AND CO. LTD.

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***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ORIENTAL ENCOUNTERS***

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