you've given me a sort of a home and
family, you and old Claude. I can tell you I've often felt lonesome in
Europe, I've often felt all in, right away from everybody, and my Dad
trying to starve me out, and all my people dead against what I was
doing. Since I've known you, well, I've felt quite bully in comparison
with what it used to be. Claude's success and yours, it's just going to
be my success too. And that's all there is to it."

He wrung her hand and shouted for Claude.

It was nearly time for him to go.

CHAPTER XXVI

Jernington, after sending to Claude several anxious and indeed almost
deplorable letters, pleading to be let off his bargain by telegram,
arrived in Algiers in the middle of the following July, with a great
deal of fuss and very little luggage.

The Heaths welcomed him warmly.

Although he was a native of Suffolk, and had only spent a year in
Germany, he succeeded in looking almost exactly like a German student.
Rather large and bulky, he had a quite hairless face, very fair, with
Teutonic features, and a high forehead, above which the pale hair of his
head was cropped like the coat of a newly singed horse. His eyes were
pale blue, introspective and romantic. At the back of his neck, just
above his low collar, appeared a neat little roll of white flesh.
Charmian thought he looked as if he had once, consenting, been gently
boiled. A flowing blue tie, freely peppered with ample white spots, gave
a Bohemian touch to his pleasant and innocent appearance. He was dressed
for cool weather in England, and wore boots with square toes and elastic
sides.

In his special line he was a man of extraordinary talent.

He had intended to be a composer, but had little faculty for original
work. His knowledge of composition, nevertheless, was enormous, and he
was the best orchestral "coach" in England.

His heart was in his work. His devotion to a clever pupil knew no
limits. And he considered Claude the cleverest pupil he had ever taught.

Charmian, therefore, accepted him with enthusiasm--boots, tie, little
roll of white flesh, the whole of him.

He settled down with them in Mustapha, once he had been conveyed into
the house, as comfortably as a cat in front of whom, with every tender
precaution, has been placed a bowl of rich milk. In a couple of days it
seemed as if he had always been there.

Charmian did not see very much of him. The two men toiled with diligence
despite the great heat wh