to ill-treat the servants, and usurped my mother's place in the house.
"Some days after my wedding I was in my shop as usual, when the two women appeared as before. I immediately beckoned them to follow me into the inner part. As soon as we were there I turned to the false Khadijah, and almost choking with anger I asked her why she had brought this curse upon my life.
"'What have I ever done to you that you should make such a day of pitch for me?' I cried.
"She laughed heartily, and her old servant followed her example. I was just about to burst forth into a torrent of invectives when she threw off her veil and, laying her hand on my arm, said softly, 'I have done this, Halil, to show you that the motto over your shop is not true, and that the understanding of woman is as long as her hair. I will show you a way by which you can divorce your wife without offending her father, but on one condition only.'
"'It is granted,' I cried, 'if I come freely out of this.'
"Change the motto over your shop."
"'Change, then, the motto over your shop, and put instead, "Long is the hair of woman, and long also is her understanding,"' she said, almost fiercely.
"'But I shall have the whole bazaar laughing at me,' I cried, aghast at this proposal. 'I will take it away and restore my father's proverb if you will help me, and will give you as much jewellery as you shall ask, but I cannot change the motto to what you say.'
"'Jewellery is nothing to me,' she said, scornfully. 'Change the motto to what I have said, or keep your wife, I care not which.' Upon this she veiled herself and was giong away, but I detailed her and said, 'O maiden, you have asked me a very hard thing; but I will do even this if you will rid me of this woman, and tell me in truth who you are, so that I may have you for myself.'
"She promised she would, and made me swear by the sacred window of the Prophet that I would change the motto to her liking the day after I should be married to her. She then went away, saying she had stayed too long already, but that she would send her servant the next day, who would tell me her plan.
"On my return home that evening my mother met me with many complaints of the behaviour of my wife, who had abused her during my absence, and she ended by bewailing that I had not let her choose a wife for me.
"The next day the servant appeared, and after telling me who her mistress really was, thus unfolded her plan:—
"'To-morrow evening you must meet your father-in-law at the coffee-house he frequents, and in the meantime collect some of the poorest and lowest men you can find, and promise them a good backsheesh if they will obey the orders you will give them, which are these: While you are at the coffee-house the oldest man of them must come in and sit by your side, and call you his dear nephew, and say he hears that you have made a rich marriage, and that he hopes you are not going to slight your own relations in consequence. The other men must follow his example, and say much the same thing, but call you cousin, brother-in-law, or friend.
"The old Sheikh, who is very proud of his family, will want you to divorce his daughter at once, but you must pretend you are too satisfied with her to do that, and from threats he will come to entreaties, and will at last want to bribe you. Not till then
