"Not exactly alone." McLean smiled. "There's Mohammed and Hassan and Abdullah and Alewa and Saord-el-Tawahi—"
"What do you call him when you are in a hurry?" laughed the girl.
It was a tremendously pleasant evening. He had expected constraint and secret embarrassment and he had discovered this delightful interest and bright vivacity.
And if beneath that interest and vivacity something lay forever stilled and chilled in Miss Jeffries' breast—like a poor hidden corpse beneath bright roses—why at two and twenty expectancies flourish so gayly that one lone bud is not long missed. And chagrin is sometimes a salutary transient shower, and self-confidence is all the more delicate for a dimming cloud.
Moreover McLean's unconscious absorption was balm and blessing.
When in startled realization of time and place he rose at last and she murmured laughing, "And after all you never met Aunt and Uncle!" he felt a queer blush tingle his cheek bones and a daring impulse shape the thought aloud that in that case he must come again.
"We're here five days more," said Jinny, the explicit.
Thoughtfully he repeated, "Five days," and said farewell.
"Now if he decorously waits to the next to the last day—!" murmured Jinny to herself, her opinion of the Scots race hanging in the balance.
He didn't. But it was not the initiative of the Scots race which brought him to her, late that very next afternoon, but a soiled looking note which he held crumpled in his hand.