"But your master is sure to want you," said she with growing confusion, "and we cannot always remain a burthen on the kind folks here. I shall not work at the loom again; but as I am now free, and have the scroll that proves it, I must soon look about for some employment. And a strong, healthy fellow like you cannot always be nursing yourself." "Nursing myself!" and he laughed gaily. "I will earn money, and enough for three!" "By your camels always, up and down the country?" "I have done with that," said he with a grin. "We will go back to our own country; there I will buy a good piece of pasture land, for my eldest brother has our little estate, and you may ask Haschim whether I understand camel-breeding." "But Rustem, consider." "Consider! Think this, and think that! Where there's a will there's a way. That is the upshot of it all. And if you mean to say that before you buy you must have money, and that the best may come to grief, all I can tell you is... Can you read? No? nor I; but here in my pocket I have my accounts in the master's own hand. Eleven thousand, three hundred and sixty drachmae were due to me for wages the last time we reckoned: all the profit the master had set down to my credit since I led his caravan. He has kept almost all of it for me; for food was allowed, and there was almost always a bit of stuff for a garment to be found among the bales, and I never was a sot. Eleven thousand, three hundred and sixty drachmae! Hey, little one, that is the figure. And now what do you say? Can we buy something with that? Yes or no?" He looked at her triumphantly, and she eagerly replied: "Yes, yes indeed; and in our country I think something worth having." "And we--you and I--we will begin a quite new life. I was seventeen when I first set out with my master, and I was twenty-six last midsummer. How many years wandering does that make?" They both thought this over for some time; then Mandane said doubtfully "If I am not mistaken it is eight." "I believe it is nine," he exclaimed. "Let us see. Here, give me your little paw! There, I begin with seventeen, that is where I started. First your little-finger--what a mite of a thing, and then the rest." He took her right hand and counted off her fingers till he ended with the last finger of the left. The result puzzled him; he shook his head, saying: "There are ten fingers on both hands, sure enough, and yet it cannot be ten years; it is nine at most I know."