And she said to Agib, "O my son, where hast thou been?" Quoth he, "We have been in the city of Damascus. Then she rose and set before him confection of pomegranate-seed and said to the eunuch, "Sit down and eat with thy young master." The eunuch said to himself, "By Allah, we have no mind to eat!" but he sat down, and so did Agib, though his belly was full of what he had already eaten and drunk. Now the conserve lacked sugar, so he took a piece of bread and dipped it therein and ate, but found it insipid, for that he was already surfeited, and exclaimed, "Faugh! what is this nasty mess?" "O my son," said his grandmother, "dost thou find fault with my cookery? I cooked this myself, and there is not a cook in the land can compare with me, except it be thy father Bedreddin Hassan." "O my lady," replied Agib, "this thy dish is naught; for we saw but now in the city a cook who dresses pomegranate-seed, so that the very smell of it opens the heart and the taste would give a full man an appetite; and as for thy mess, compared with his, it is worth neither much nor little." When his grandmother heard this, she was exceeding wroth and said to the eunuch, "Out on thee, dost thou corrupt my grandson and take him into cookshops?" The eunuch was frightened and denied, saying, "We did not enter the shop, but only saw it in passing." "By Allah!" said Agib, "we went in and ate, and it was better than thine." Then his grandmother rose and went and told her brother-in-law, who was incensed against the eunuch and sending for him, said to him, "Why didst thou take my son into a cookshop?" "We did not go in," replied the eunuch. But Agib said, "We did go in and ate of pomegranate-seed, till we were full; and the cook gave us to drink of iced sherbet of sugar." At this, the Vizier's anger redoubled and he questioned the eunuch, but he still denied. Then said the Vizier, "If what thou sayest be true, sit down and eat before us." So he sat down and tried to eat, but could not and threw away the morsel, saying, "O my lord, indeed I am full since yesterday." By this, the Vizier knew that he had eaten at the cook's and bade his slaves throw him down and beat him. So they drubbed him, till he roared for mercy and said, "O my lord, do not beat me, and I will tell thee the truth." Whereupon the Vizier stopped the beating and said, "Speak the truth." Quoth the eunuch, "Know then that we did enter the shop of a cook, who was dressing pomegranate seed, and he set some of it before us; by Allah, I never ate the like of it in my life, nor did I ever taste aught nastier than that which is before us!" Bedreddin's mother was enraged at this and said to the eunuch, "Thou must go back to the cook and fetch us a dish of his pomegranate-seed and show it to thy master, that he may say which is the better, his or mine." "Good," answered he. So she gave him a dish and half a dinar, and he returned to the shop and said to Bedreddin, "We have made a wager about thy cookery in our lord's