“Inshallah!” came the chorus of a dozen voices; followed by a general laugh when Gulbeyzah, the Circassian, yawned and sighed, “Four goodly husbands all my own! O Lord, give quickly!”

“That is the reason,” Hind concluded, “why good women have a word to say to crows who seek to settle. Any one of them may be the bearer of the blessed edict. The reason as related⁠—Allah knows!”

“Good news and hopeful, by my maidenhood!⁠—the best I ever heard!” chuckled Gulbeyzah, reposing with her back against the parapet. She then remained a long while silent, lost in daydreams.

The hour was after sunrise of a spring morning in the twelve hundred and eightieth year of the Hegirah, the second of the reign of Ismaîl. The house was that of Muhammad Pasha Sâlih, a Turk by origin but born and bred in Egypt, who held a high position in the government. The girls, their task accomplished, sat down on their heels, each with her tray of basketwork before her, and sniffed the breeze, in no haste to return indoors.