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 handsome, his short drooping mouth was stubborn rather than strong; but once when she tried to tell Ripley that Captain Jones was not a man to appeal to the affections of elegant young American females, her voice broke suddenly. Mr. Jones himself seemed to have completely forgotten the odd incident of the earrings. He was often reported playing a guitar in the Scollays' drawing-room.

It was easy to work for Jones, as easy as for Captain Poggy or the gallant and sweet-tempered Mr. Fox. She suggested rearrangement of material. The great traveller was entirely amenable. She copied, in her neat, fine-lady hand, chapter after chapter of his green-growing, living narrative, and indicated where she thought his illustrations should be placed. He humbly, even gratefully, agreed to everything, and told her again how little he knew of books. It seemed he had read but little. That was why, perhaps, his style was so undecorated with the elegant words and fastidious euphemisms that Lanice herself so much affected. The story of his five years in Arabia grew up out of the sun-baked country itself. There was the mark of Eastern magic upon it and ever the Jinn and the houri in his talk. This rather ignorant young man, as he always seemed to Lanice, was an authority on such things as the Thousand and One Nights, and the poems of Antar, Khayyam, and Yazid Ebn Moamia.

It was more convenient that Lanice should spend her mornings in the West Cedar Street house. The first time she went, a respectable cleaning woman fulfilled