n Latin, but I was nowhere
in figures."

"Not grown quarrelsome, I hope, on the strength of your fighting,
Edgar?"

"No, sir, I hope not. I never had a fight at school except the one I had
three months after I got there, and I only had that one row you speak of
with a clerk. I don't think it would be fair, you see, to get into rows
with fellows who have no idea how thoroughly I have been taught."

His father nodded.

"Quite right, Edgar. My ideas are that a man who can box well is much
less likely to get into quarrels than one who cannot. He knows what he
can do, and that, if forced to use his skill, he is able to render a
good account of himself, and therefore he can afford to put up with
more, than one who is doubtful as to whether he is likely to come well
out of a fight if he begins one."

Edgar found on his arrival at Alexandria that his mother and sisters
were about to leave for England. Mrs. Blagrove had become seriously
indisposed, the result, as she maintained, of the climate, but which was
far more due to her indolent habits, for she never took any exercise
whatever. Her general health was greatly impaired, and the two Italian
doctors who attended her--there being no English medical men resident
there--had most strongly advised that she should return home. They had
frankly told Mr. Blagrove that a colder climate was absolutely necessary
to her, not only because it would brace her up and act as a tonic, but
because she would probably there be induced to take a certain amount of
exercise. The two girls were to accompany her, in order that they
should, like Edgar, enjoy the advantage of going to an English school
and mixing with English girls of their own age. They, too, had both felt
the heat during the preceding summer, and Mr. Blagrove felt that a stay
of two or three years in England would be an immense advantage to them.

Mrs. Blagrove was to stay with her father, a clergyman in the west of
England, for a few months, when her husband intended himself to go over
for a time. The war had much reduced business, the activity of the
French privateers rendered communication irregular and precarious, the
rates both for freight and insurance were very high, the number of
vessels entering the port were but a tithe of those that frequented it
before the outbreak of the war, and as no small part of Mr. Blagrove's
business consisted in supplying vessels with such stores as they needed,
his operations were so restr