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 words portrayed its less commendable features. "It was a woman's reception," she began again, "at a Turkish house. A marriage reception--" She had certainly secured McLean's whole-hearted attention. "A marriage reception--a Turkish marriage reception?" he said very sharply and amazedly as his caller continued to pause. "Do you mean to say that Jack Ryder went into a Turkish house dressed as a woman--?" There was a pronounced angularity of feature about the young Scotchman which now took on a chiseled sternness. Swiftly Jinny interposed. "Oh, you mustn't blame him, Mr. McLean! You see, I wanted very much to go to a Turkish reception and I didn't have the courage to go alone or drag some other tourist as inexperienced as myself, and so Jack--why, there didn't seem any harm in his dressing up. Just for fun, you know. He put on a Turkish mantle and a veil up to his eyes and he was sure he'd never be found out. I ought not to have let him, I know--it was my fault--" She looked so flushed and innocent and distressed that McLean's chivalry rose swiftly to her need. "Indeed you mustn't blame yourself Miss--Miss Jeffries. You don't know Egypt--and Jack does. He knew that if he had been discovered there would have been no help for him--and no questions asked afterwards. And it might have been very dangerous for you. The blame is just his now," he said decisively, yet not without a certain weak-kneed sympathy with the culprit.