"So I shall!"
She sent him a grateful look.
"What a good friend you are to us, Alston!" she said, and there was heart at that moment in her voice.
"And haven't you been good friends to me? What about the studio? What about the Prophet's Chamber? Why, 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.