“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. “I really don’t know why you shouldn’t.” “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. “Every one wants to drive me away!” “Who else?” “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.” He made a sharp gesture of annoyance. “Don’t be childish,” he said. “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.” “Do you really think it so serious?” “Most emphatically.” “Will you come with us and show us the way?” she inquired, gazing with exaggerated appeal into his goggles. “I? No.” “What shall you do?” “Stick.” “Pins through scarabs,” she laughed, “while beneath you Caracuña riots and revolutes and massacres foreigners. Nero with his fiddle was nothing to you.” “Miss Brewster, I’m afraid you are suffering from a misplaced sense of humor. Will you believe me when I tell you that I have certain sources of information in local matters both serviceable and reliable?” “You seem to have bet on a certainty in the Dutch blockade matter.” “Well, it’s equally certain that there is bubonic plague here.” “A _bola_. You told me so yourself.”