"'Well, we must thresh that out again,' I heard my father say, and I am sure he never showed himself so much interested by any of my performances, not even when I brought home the gold medal for the first place in the baccalauréat. They could hardly let each other go, and if you, Alida, were present at that moment in the mind of the Bey, you were relegated to some distant hinterland, by me unexplored.
"At supper, before Saunders McKie and the domestics I steered my barque with care. For the ears of Saunders were growing long and lop like a rabbit's, with sheer intensity of listening. Once or twice things became a little sultry, as when the Bey described the bannered procession he had seen at the station.
"'Ah, politics,' said my father. 'I am glad they do not manifest over on this side of the water. White, red, or tricolour, it is all one to a man among his books.'
"'Not to me!' said the Bey, somewhat explosively.
"'Of course not—you are a soldier, and these things have been your life's business. But you must make allowances for a recluse and a scholar!'
"I did not think my father could have been so tactful.
"So Salaam, for to-night, dear lady! I kiss your golden feet."
"Tuesday.
"The freshness of this high air to you! I take up my tale. The Bey and my father have continued inseparable. Twice have I guided Keller to the Garden Cottage, and twice has he beheld it with wandering eyes. I am so sure that he has taken little in and that he will be able to give Linn no proper satisfaction, that I have made a plan of each floor to scale, marking all the cupboards deep and shallow, all exits and entrances, and the distance from Gobelet itself, with the garden walks and coppices on a separate plan. These I send now, so that you can have them well studied before the Bey's return, when Linn and you will know a great deal more about the Garden Cottage than he will. The third expert in Arabic came to dinner to-night, and to my relief he wore his college gown. I was afraid that he might appear in the full black uniform of the Company of Jesus. Keller did not turn a hair. They addressed each other in the current Arabic of Algeria, and in a clapping of hands they were deep in the discussion of Abd-el-Kader and all manner of recent tribal matters among the clans of the Atlas.
"I did not understand very much, and indeed even the scholarly Arabic of my father was momentarily put out by words and expressions so richly local that the recollection of them caused the Vicar Apostolic to laugh aloud.