“Oh, essentially a soul spasm,” he declared.
“Yes, I suppose it was,” Sylvia agreed, pensively.
“I think, you know, I must meet Mrs. Gainsborough,” said Avery. “Fate answers for you. Here she comes.”
Don Alfonso, with the pain that every dog and dragoman feels in the separation of his charges, had taken advantage of Sylvia’s talk with Avery to bring Mrs. Gainsborough triumphantly back to the fold.
“Here we are again,” said Mrs. Gainsborough, limping down the path. “And my behind looks like a magic lantern. Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn’t see you’d met a friend. So that’s what Alfonso was trying to tell me. He’s been going like an alarm-clock all the way here. Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. How do you like Morocco? We got shut out last night.”
“This is a friend of Michael Fane’s,” said Sylvia.
“Did you know him? He was a nice young fellow. Very nice he was. But he wouldn’t know me now. Very stay-at-home I was when he used to come to Mulberry Cottage. Why, he tried to make me ride in a hansom once, and I was actually too nervous. You know, I’d got into a regular rut. But now, well, upon me word, I don’t believe now I should say ‘no’ if any one was to invite me to ride inside of a whale. It’s her doing, the tartar.”
Avery had learned a certain amount of Arabic during his stay in Morocco and he made the bazaars of Tetuan much more interesting than Don Alfonso could have done. He also had many tales to tell of the remote cities like Fez and Mequinez and Marakeesh. Sylvia almost wished that she could pack Mrs. Gainsborough off to England and accompany him into the real interior. Some of her satisfaction in Tetuan had been rather spoiled that morning by finding a visitor’s book in the hotel with the names of traveling clergymen and their daughters patronizingly inscribed therein. However, Avery decided to ride away almost at once, and said that he intended to banish the twentieth century for two or three months.
They stayed a few days at Tetuan, but the bugs were too many for Mrs. Gainsborough, who began to sigh for a tranquil bed. Avery and Sylvia had a short conversation together before they left. He thanked her for her sympathy, held to his intention of spending the summer in Morocco, but was nearly sure he should return to England in the autumn, with a mind serenely fixed.
“I wish, if you go back to London, you’d look Jenny up,” he said.