oine sat enthroned,
apart, the financial adviser, dwelling in oriental magnificence upon our
contributions.

"'What do you think, Mrs. Evans?' I asked, taking the bull by the horns.
'Shall we gamble a hundred or so and get rich quick?'

"'You're not married,' she replied, without looking up. 'You can spare
it I dare say. It is different for Jack. He hasn't any money to throw
away.'

"'Well,' I said, 'I haven't any to throw away, either, I can assure you.
I wouldn't go to sea if I had. But Jack thinks this is a great
opportunity to invest his money where he can look after it. You see,
he'll be drawing a salary as well when he's ashore in Saloniki.'

"Still she didn't look up. She had not budged an inch from her
conviction that I agreed with her.

"'I couldn't think of living abroad,' she said, severely. 'I have Babs
to consider.'

"I'm afraid Jack hadn't thought of that. He hadn't visualized his wife
and baby dwelling in a Turkish town, cut off by thousands of miles of
ocean from home. He had been so preoccupied with the divine prospect of
'a job ashore' that he had forgotten the environment. And we had been to
Saloniki with coal, time and again. I can't say I blamed her. Residence
in southeastern Europe has its drawbacks for a housewife. And quite
apart from a natural repugnance to dirt, Mrs. Evans had an unnatural
repugnance to anything foreign. She never really left England. She took
it with her. She carried with her into her husband's cabin, and along
the wild oriental foliage and architecture of Alexandrian streets, the
prim and narrow ideals of her native valley. It never occurred to her
that those people in turbans and fezzes were human. It never occurred to
her when a French or Italian girl passed, dressed with the dainty and
charming smartness of her race, that she might possibly be virtuous as
well. She shrivelled at their very proximity, drawing the angelic Babs
from their contamination. She was uneasy, and would continue to be
uneasy, until she was safe at home once more in Threxford, England. That
was the burden of her unuttered longing: to get home, to get home, back
to the little semi-detached red-brick villa on the Portsmouth Road,
which her father had given her for a wedding present and which fifty
Macedoines would never induce her to sell.

"For that is what it would mean if Jack invested even two hundred pounds
in this wonderful enterprise to develop Macedonia. He had spent several
hundred in