“You needn’t be angry at me. You see, dad’s time is valuable.”
“Oh, well, my time—However, that doesn’t matter. I haven’t wholly wasted it.” He glanced toward the beggar, who was profoundly regarding the cathedral clock.
“If you like, I’ll get you an interview with dad,” she offered magnanimously.
“Me? No, I thank you,” he said crisply. “I’m not patient of unnecessary red tape.”
Miss Brewster looked at him in surprise. It was borne in upon her, as she looked, that this man was not accustomed to being lightly regarded by other men, however busy or important; that his own concerns in life were quite as weighty to him, and in his esteem, perhaps, to others, as were the interests of any magnate; and that, man to man, there would be no shyness or indecision or purposelessness anywhere in his make-up.
“If it was important,” she began hesitantly, “my father would be—”
“It was of no importance to me,” he cut in. “To others—Perhaps I could see some one else of your party.”
“Well, here I am.” She smiled. “Why won’t I do?”
Behind the obscuring disks she could feel his glance read her. The grimness at the mouth’s corners relaxed.
“Dad says I’d have made a man of affairs,” she remarked.
“Why, it’s just this. You should be planning to leave this country.”
Miss Brewster bewailed her harsh lot with drooping lip.
“That railroad man, Mr. Galpy, was offering us special inducements to leave, in the form of special trains any time we liked. It isn’t hospitable.”
“A jail is hospitable. But one doesn’t stay in it when one can get out.”
“If Caracuña were the jail and I the ‘one,’ one might. I quite love it here.”
“Childish? You come down like Freedom from the mountain heights, and unfurl your warnings to the air, and complain of lost time and all that sort of thing, and what does it all amount to?” she demanded, with spirit. “That we should sail away, when you know perfectly well that the Dutch won’t let us sail away! Childish, indeed! Don’t you be _beetlish!_”
“There’s a way out, without much risk, but some discomfort. You could strike south-east to the Bird Reefs, take a small boat, and get over to the mainland. As soon as the blockade is off, the yacht can take your luggage around. The trip would be rough for you, but not dangerous. Not as dangerous as staying here may be.”