head. "He very seldom
mentioned young ladies."

"Oh--!" Jinny tried not to appear dashed. "We are very old
friends--in America--and of course I've seen a good deal of him
since I've been in Cairo. In fact, he is stopping now at the same
hotel with us--with my aunt and uncle and myself."

McLean smiled. "He said it was a tooth," he mentioned dryly.

In Jinny's eyes a little flicker answered him, but her words were
ingenuous. "Oh, of course he _has_ been having a time with the
dentist. That's why he couldn't return to his camp. What I meant
was, that at the hotel we have been seeing him every day until--he
has just disappeared since day before yesterday and we--that is,
I--am very much concerned about it."

"Disappeared? You mean, he--"

"Just disappeared, that's all. He hasn't been at the hotel--he
hasn't been anywhere that I know of, and I haven't heard a word from
him--so I telephoned you and then when I found he hadn't been
here--"

McLean looked off into space. "Eh, well, he'll turn up," he said
comfortingly. "Jack's erratic, you may say, in his comings and
goings. He means nothing by it.... I've known him do the same to
me.... Any time, now; you're likely to hear--"

Miss Jeffries sat up a little straighter and her cheeks burned with
brighter warmth.

"It isn't just that I want to see him, Mr. McLean," she took quietly
distinct pains to explain. "It's because I am anxious--"

"Not a need, not a need in the world. Jack knows his way about....
He may have been called back to the diggings, you know--if they dug
up a bit porcelain there or a few grains of corn the boy would
forget the sun was shining."

Perhaps his caller's burnished hair had shaped that thought. "Jack
knows his way about," he repeated encouragingly, as one who
demolishes the absurd fears of women and children.

"You don't quite understand." Jinny's tones were silken smooth. "You
see, I left him in rather unusual circumstances. It was a place
where he had no business in the world to be--"

At McLean's unguardedly startled gaze her humor overtook her wrath.

"Oh, it was quite all right for _me_" she replied mischievously to
that look. "Only not for him. You see, he was masquerading--"

"Again?" thought McLean, involuntarily. Lord, what a hand for the
lassies that lad was--and he had thought him such an aloof one!

"Masquerading as a woman--so he could take me to a reception."

Jinny began to falter. Just putting that escapade into wo