No sooner was the Pasha gone than Umm ed-Dahak crept back softly to her mistress and cooed of consolation in her ear. Muhammad, who had started howling out of sympathy, she told to go and play with Ghandûr’s son.
“By Allah, it is all my fault, not thine,” she whispered. “I ought to have foreseen this grief and warned thee. Vex not thy soul at all! It is no matter! Praise be to Allah, we can change our policy. Tomorrow thou wilt beat thy son a little, and all the world will praise thy management.”
But the mother’s tears were flowing less from sense of guilt than for the helplessness, the lack of energy, which she discovered in herself at such a crisis. The call to make an effort paralysed her; she hung on Umm ed-Dahak like a frightened child, agreeing with loud sobs to the old woman’s statement that on the morrow they would make a new beginning.