to the rail and said something that Maseden could not overhear. [Pg 71] [Pg 71] A man joined the two girls, whereupon Nina also faced aft. The newcomer, standing well away under the screen, could not be seen at all, and Maseden thought it must be Mr. Gray, the querulous person whose outspoken utterances had first warned Maseden that his wife was on board. But he erred again. Some comment passed by Nina raised a laugh, and Maseden recognized the voice of Mr. Sturgess, whose baggage he had carried overnight. “I guess not!” he was saying, with a humorous stress on each word. “As a summer resort, San Juan disagreed with my complaint, Miss Gray.” “Have you been ill, then?” came the natural query. “No, but I might have been had I remained there too long,” was the answer. “A change of president in one of these small republics is like a bad railroad smash—you never know who’ll get hurt. I’ve a notion that Mr. Gray must have felt sort of relieved when he brought you two young ladies safe and sound aboard this ship.” “We didn’t see anything specially alarming,” said Nina. “Madge went out twice during the day with Mr. Steinbaum, a trader, and the streets were very quiet, she thought.” Madge! Was “Madge” a family diminutive [Pg 72]for Madeleine? Maseden neither knew nor cared. Nina’s harmless chatter had told him the truth. Madge most certainly did find the streets quiet, if the story brought by Lopez from Cartagena was correct; namely, that she had been carried out of the Castle in a dead faint. [Pg 72] And now the heartless creature was actually laughing! “One cannot take a South American revolution quite seriously—it always has something comical about it,” she cried, and it was astounding how closely the one sister’s voice resembled the other’s. “I understand that some poor people were shot the night before last, but I saw a man who keeps a restaurant opposite Mr. Steinbaum’s house produce a device with flags and a scroll. On the scroll was painted ‘Long Live Valdez.’ He drew some fresh letters over the first part of the name, dabbed on plenty of black and white paint, and the new legend ran ‘Long Live Suarez.’ The whole thing was done, and the flags were out, in less than five minutes.”
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