The women and children were collecting the gathered dates and packing them in skins and boxes and baskets to be sent away to the markets; but the dried dates that we so often eat are left much longer on the trees to ripen and grow sugary. "Oh, Hamid, thou and Fatimah must have a 'necklace of _sham_' to wear! All the children have them!" said Rashid, who had been exploring the garden and had come running quickly back. "There is a woman making them now." The woman was threading dates on a string and then dipping them into boiling water so that they would keep their pretty golden colour. Then she put them aside in the sun to dry. Rashid bargained with the woman for three of the necklaces at once. "It brings one good luck to wear a necklace of the dates of Medina," said the woman as she hung the strings of dates around the children's necks; "and thou must not eat them as this naughty one here has just done." She frowned at her own little girl, who stood by sobbing because her mother had just given her a box on the ear for eating half of her new necklace. The children had a jolly time helping to pick the dates and pack them, though likely there was more play than work. And they all ate so many dates it was a wonder that they were not ill. At sundown they rode back to the town, chaffing and laughing with everybody they met along the road. When they got home, hot and tired, Rashid's mother gave them a lovely drink made of the juice of fresh pomegranates, cooled in the snowy ice which was brought down to the city each night from the neighbouring mountains. "Do you know why the letter 'O' is on every date stone?" asked Rashid that evening as he and Hamid were sitting in the courtyard playing checkers with date stones, while Fatimah sat watching the progress of the game. They often occupied themselves thus in the cool of the evening after supper. "I have never seen the 'O;' where is it?" asked Hamid, carefully looking at a date stone as if he was only seeing one for the first time. "There it is," said Rashid, who showed him a tiny round ring on one side of the date stone. "It is said that when our great Prophet first ate of the fruit of the date-palm, he exclaimed: 'Oh! what a fine fruit!' Ever since the letter 'O' has been found on every date stone." Hamid and Fatimah began looking closely at every date stone they could find; and, sure enough, on every one of them there was a tiny letter "O." You will always find it there, too, if you look for it. But the young people did not always play. In the early mornings and cool evenings Rashid and Hamid went to school in one corner of the great Mosque. Here the pupils sat in rows on mats, or lounged about on the floor. Before each pupil was a little wooden stand, on which lay a big book from which they shouted out their lessons in a loud voice. They made such a noise that one wonders how they could learn anything at all.