As Claude wished him to stay on, and had no suspicion that any plan was in the wind, Charmian found herself in a difficult position as the days went by and the end of August drew near. Her imagination revolved about all sorts of preposterous means for getting rid of the poor fellow, whom she honestly liked, and to whom she was grateful for his enthusiastic labors. She thought of making a hole in his mosquito net, to permit the entry of those marauders whom he dreaded; of casually mentioning that there had been cases suspiciously resembling Asiatic cholera in the Casbah of Algiers; of pretending to fall ill and saying that Claude must take her away for a change; even of getting Alston Lake to send a telegram to Jernington saying that his presence was urgently demanded in his native Suffolk. Had he a mother? Till now Charmian had never thought of probing into Jernington's family affairs. When, driven by stress of circumstances, she began to do so, she found that his mother had died almost before he was born. Indeed, his relatives seemed to be as few in number as they were robust in constitution. She dismissed the idea of the telegram. She even said to herself that of course she had never entertained it. But what was she to do? She tried to be a little cold to Jernington, thinking it might be possible to convey to him subtly the idea that perhaps his visit had lasted long enough, that his hostess had other plans in which his presence was not included. But Jernington was conscious of no subtleties except those connected with the employment of musical instruments. And Charmian found it almost impossible to be glacial to such a simple and warm-hearted creature. His very boots seemed to claim her cordiality with their unabashed elastic sides. The way in which he pushed his cuffs out of sight appealed to the goodness of her heart, although it displeased her aesthetic sense. She had to recognize the fact that old Jernington was one of those tiresome people you cannot be unkind to. Nevertheless she must get him out of the house and out of Africa. If he stuck to the plan of leaving them at the end of August there would probably be no need of diplomacy, or of forcible ejection; but it had become obvious to Charmian that the last thing old Jernington was capable of doing was just that sticking to a plan. "Do you mean to sail on the _Marechal Bugeaud_ or the _Ville d'Alger_?" she asked him. "I wonder," he replied artlessly. "In my idea Berlioz was not really the founder of modern orchestration as some have asserted. Your husband and I--"