When Mohammed Aga met his young friend in the evening, he asked whether he had commenced that wonderful speculation which he kept so secret.
“It is all laid out already,” replied Hassan, smiling.
“Hasty bargains lead to repentance,” said the old clerk, shaking his head; “pray, what makseb [profit] do you expect to make?”
“It has paid me a good interest already, and I am quite satisfied. Do not ask me any more about it,” said Hassan, looking rather confused, for concealment was foreign to his nature.
Mohammed Aga refrained from asking any more questions; but, partly from curiosity and partly from the interest which he felt in Hassan’s welfare, he was determined before leaving Damanhour to learn how he had disposed of his little property. Nor was the task by any means difficult; for in small towns in the East as well as in the West everybody knows and talks about everything. The chief clerk, therefore, had no difficulty on the following day in tracing Hassan to the guard-house, where he had been seen talking to Ibrahim the _kawàss_. To find that well-known individual was the work of a few minutes, and a few more spent with him over a cup of coffee and a pipe drew from him all that he knew of the transaction, including the release of the Arab family on Hassan’s paying their debt of two thousand piastres. “You see, Aga,” added the _kawàss_, concluding his narrative, “it was my duty to release them when the money was paid, and not to inquire whence it came; but if you are the merchant whom the young man mentioned as willing to advance it on any security offered by the Arab, why, I fear——” Here he looked very significantly at Mohammed, and threw out a long puff of smoke from his chibouque.
“Then you think the Arab cannot pay back the money?” inquired Mohammed.
“Not a dollar of it,” answered the _kawàss_. “The Governor would have ordered him the bastinado as an example to others, but two bad seasons have left the poor devil’s purse as empty as my pipe.” So saying, he shook out its ashes, and left Mohammed to his own meditations.
“That boy will never have a farthing to bless his grey hairs with! Money in his hand is like water in a sieve, and yet, and yet,”—here the old clerk passed the back of his hand across his eyes,—“Allah bless him an hundredfold.” He walked slowly home, and without saying a word to Hassan of his meeting with the _kawàss_, he told him that, as the affairs for which they had come to Damanhour were now settled, they might return to Alexandria, which they did on the following day.