"As far as I could make out, however, there was talk of a threatened rebellion because of the defeat and humiliation of France, and how, from his home in Brousse, Abd-el-Kader was doing all he could to prevent it. The dinner was a great success, but my chief amusement was to watch the face of old Saunders McKie.
"'Losh-an-entie, Maister Aängus,' he said afterwards, 'to think that men wha can talk a reasonable civilised langwage like English, or even a chatter-chatter like the French, should bemean themselves to roar at yin anither like the beasts o' the forest!'
"I told him that in all probability Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples spoke a dialect of it. Now I did not know how closely Aramaic approached Arabic, but I did know that the argument was calculated to impress Saunders. However, he only said, 'Maybe, but I think none the mair o' them for a caper like that, and I have ay been informed by them that kens a deal mair than you, Maister Aängus, that when the disceeples spak' or wrote, they set their tongues to the Greek, which is a decent responsible dead language, and weel thocht o' amang learned folks, or they would never spend sae muckle time learning it to the puir divinity laddies at the college.' I argued, somewhat foolishly, that most universities now had a professor of Arabic, but Saunders only said, 'Guid peety them that has to sit under him!'
"Before going out, for I had stayed behind to smoke a cigarette and enjoy the dismay of the old servant, Saunders betrayed the reason of his anger at the use of Arabic.
"'And to think,' he grumbled, as he went about dumping trays on the sideboard, 'that there's Mistress Syme and a' the rest o' them in the kitchen waiting for me to tell them a' that was said, and me has to gang doon never a bit the wiser, wi' my finger in my mouth like a bairn that hasna learned his lesson!'"
So much I wrote to Alida of the successful reception and early doings of Keller Bey, ancient war-leader under the Emir of the Atlas. He had taken enthusiastically to Aramon le Vieux, and certainly Aramon in the person of my father and Professor Renard had taken enthusiastically to him. My father duly made the offer that I had side-tracked by anticipation. There was room enough for half a dozen families of that size in Gobelet. The servants were lazy, and needed something to do. Renard should come down, and all of them should dwell together in a haze of Arabic poetry and tobacco smoke. Besides, my father found the Bey a night-bird after his own heart, and absolutely rejoiced in having someone under his roof whom at any hour he might find awake and smoking in the library, if he should find himself restless.
But this I would have at no price. I begged Keller Bey to remember that he was here to arrange for Alida and Linn. If they were to be under my father's roof, they would be eternally exposed to the jealous spying of Saunders and of the other servants, while at the Garden Cottage they would have a wall, and if necessary a locked gate, between them and any espionage.
But by far the most delicate part of my mission was to break the news to the Deventer family. I had sworn Hugh by solemn oath not to forestall me in the matter, and I think he awaited my attempt with a kind of malicious pleasure.
Certainly it was a large task to explain an unseen Alida to such a contradictory and turbulent family as the Deventers. Yet upon them and their manner of receiving Alida, befriending or showing her the cold shoulder, the whole success of the plan depended.
I might indeed bluster to Hugh that we could make a society sufficient for her within the garden bounds of Gobelet, but even as I spoke I knew the emptiness of the boast. To be happy Alida must meet and mix with girls of her own education and, so far as the Western world was concerned, social position.