CHAPTER XI
"IL M'AIME, JE VOUS DIS"
Miss Chubb was kneading bread on the morning when Tempest went over to the Mission on some business and stayed a while in the kitchen to talk. Miss Chubb usually expected it, and produced cake, or apples, or a cup of tea as an offering. And Tempest usually got good medicine out of her real common-sense and cheerful outlook in her cramped life. This morning he had something rather special to tell her, for the confirmation of his Inspectorship had come up by the last mails, and there would probably be big changes for him before long. He explained this to Miss Chubb, sitting back against the kitchen shelf and watching her thin hands glancing and turning in the tin pan.
Miss Chubb stopped her work abruptly, staring at Tempest. There was a smudge of flour on her sandy eyebrow, and it gave the suggestion of a terrier with its ears cocked.
"You don't say!" she said. "Well, I do call that fierce."
"That is not the usual manner in which to convey congratulations," suggested Tempest; but he laughed as Miss Chubb went to work again.
"Why—maybe not. But we're not to be congratulated. They didn't make you Inspector to leave you in this little hole, did they?"
"I can't tell you. It is not likely . I shall be sent somewhere else, I'm"
He stopped abruptly, but Miss Chubb knew that the end of the sentence would be "I'm afraid." She set her pale lips together. For she knew, too, why Tempest would be afraid to leave Grey Wolf.
"I suppose," she said, "Grey Wolf isn't big enough to stand such style. They'll send you expeditioning some
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