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because I have caught no fish to-day.’ ‘Be not ashamed, answered the baker. ‘Said I not to thee, “At thy leisure, till good hap betide thee?”’
Then he gave him the bread and the ten paras and he returned and told his wife, who said, ‘God is bountiful. If it please the Most High, good luck shall yet betide thee and thou shalt give the baker his due.’ On this wise he did forty days, betaking himself daily to the sea, from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, and returning [at nightfall], without fish; and still he took bread and spending-money of the baker, who never named the fish to him nor neglected him nor kept him waiting, like the folk,[1] but gave him the bread and the ten paras [forthright]. Whenever the fisherman said to him, ‘O my brother, reckon with me,’ he would say, ‘Go thy ways; this is no time for reckoning. [Wait] till good luck betide thee, and then I will reckon with thee.’ And the fisherman would go away, blessing and thanking him.
On the one-and-fortieth day, he said to his wife, ‘I have a mind to tear up the net and be quit of this life.’ ‘Why wilt thou do this?’ asked she. And he said, ‘Meseems there is an end of my getting my living from the sea. How long shall this last? By Allah, I am consumed with shame before the baker and I will go no more to the sea, so I may not pass by his shop, for I have no other way home; and every time I pass, he calls me and gives me the bread and the ten paras. How much longer shall I run in debt to him?’ ‘Praised be God the Most High,’ replied his wife, ‘who hath inclined his heart to thee, so that he giveth thee our daily bread! What mislikest thou in this?’ Quoth he, ‘I owe him now a great sum of money, and
- ↑ It seems doubtful whether this phrase means, “He did not neglect him, as most folk would have done,” or “He did not keep him waiting, as he did the rest of the folk.”
