The English had ill-treated her most shamefully. Her son must hate the English for her sake. And yet he must remember he was half an Englishman, a being of a different order from the children round him. And when he prayed he must ask Allah to increase his strength and wisdom, so that he might prove a match for any Englishman he might encounter in the course of life. The child, with bright eyes, drank in all she said, but God alone knew what his mind could make of it; for Barakah’s opinions were a tangle as of angry serpents, their utterance as incoherent as the cries of battle. She heard him once hurl “Englishwoman!” at a slave who had enraged him. The girl laughed back: “Thy mother is an Englishwoman,” when he replied: “A noble race and warlike⁠—the Muslimîn among them, like my mother. But thou art a low Christian of that race, a filthy harlot!”