That is why, although writing in Arabic, Khalid prefers English. For the Arabic verb is confined to three tenses, the primary ones only; and to break through any of these in any degree, requires such crowbars as only auxiliaries and other verbs can furnish. For this and many other reasons Khalid stops short in the mazes of Sibawai, runs out of them exasperated, depressed, and never for a long time after looks in that direction. He is now curious to know if the English language have its Sibawais and Naftawais. And so, he buys him a grammar, and there finds the way somewhat devious, too, but not enough to constitute a maze. The men who wrote these grammars must have had plenty of time to do a little useful work. They do not seem to have walked leisurely in flowing robes disserting a life-long dissertation on the origin and descent of a preposition. One day Shakib is amazed by finding the grammars page by page tacked on the walls of the cellar and Khalid pacing around leisurely lingering a moment before each page, as if he were in an art gallery. That is how he tackled his subject. And that is why he and Shakib begin to quarrel. The idea! That a fledgling should presume to pick flaws. To Shakib, who is textual to a hair, this is intolerable. And that state of oneness between them shall be subject hereafter to "the corrosive action of various unfriendly agents." For Khalid, who has never yet been snaffled, turns restively from the bit which his friend, for his own sake, would put in his mouth. The rupture follows. The two for a while wend their way in opposite directions. Shakib still cherishing and cultivating his bank account, shoulders his peddling-box and jogs along with his inspiring demon, under whose auspices, he tells us, he continues to write verse and gull with his brummagems the pious dames of the suburbs. And Khalid sits on his peddling-box for hours pondering on the necessity of disposing of it somehow. For now he scarcely makes more than a few peddling-trips each month, and when he returns, he does not go to the bank to add to his balance, but to draw from it. That is why the accounts of the two Syrians do not fare alike; Shakib's is gaining in weight, Khalid's is wasting away.