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Tony was more than glad, and the patron’s name went down in gold letters in his mental account-book.

He soon settled down at the Mission, though the life there was quite as strange to him as that in the Deux Frères had been, or stranger. Agatha’s father, a mild, spectacled man with a brown beard turning grey, had accepted him very calmly. He was used to vagabonds and rather liked them. The others did not take much notice of Tony—he was Agatha’s protégé. She was fond of him, though she would have liked him to be more affectionate, and though some of his ideas distressed her acutely.

He taught the native children conversational French; that is to say, he talked to them in that language, and jeered so bitterly when they made mistakes that they did their best to speak correctly. His method, if such it could be called, was most successful. Even the bigger boys were cowed by his virulent tongue; they were mild creatures for the most part, though greatly given to bragging. They loved stories of Tony’s travels in Europe and the East—Japan was sufficiently remote to be interesting—though they liked the European tales better still.

Agatha meanwhile was teaching him. She had no complaint to make of his application and intelligence; it is not often that an active boy of ten and a half studies as hard as Tony did; but his ideas on ethics were deplorable, and as she told her father, he was so hard and loveless sometimes.

“You mustn’t scowl at Ibrahim like that, and I’m sure you’re calling him wicked names. I don’t understand your French when you talk so fast. But he mustn’t, must he, papa?”

“You mustn’t show temper. It is a bad example for the other boys.”

One could never deny the truth of any of Mr. Wilcox’s