“Do you mean that we—you and I—are going out to North Africa?” I cried. “Really? Hip, hip, hurrah!”
“Are you mad?” he demanded, in astonishment.
“Yes; mad with joy,” I replied. “I’m tired to death of poky French garrison towns. We’ll go out to the sun and be stewed, have our throats cut by Arabs, and enjoy ourselves down to the ground.”
“My dear girl,” said my husband, with as much calmness as he could muster, “we are ordered to a post in the mountains, Teniet-el-Haad. In all probability you will get no servants to go with you, and there may not even be a fit house to live in. A lady cannot go there!”
“An English one can—we follow our husbands,” I said, stoutly.
“I shall have to go alone,” he said, quietly, “unless I can find some fellow to exchange.”
“You can do as you like,” I answered, loftily, “but I am going to join!”
And so I did, in his company and that of my three children.
I was sadly disappointed in Algiers; it appeared to my jaundiced eyes quite an ordinary town. Its arcades, filled with elegant Parisian-looking women and top-hatted, frock-coated men straight from the Champs Elysées and Bois de Boulogne, gave me quite a shock. However, I consoled myself with the thought that our station was far away up in the wild mountains of the Tell, where real live Arabs, hyenas, jackals, and a panther here and there would advantageously replace these civilized banalities.
