Evening star., 1924-07-06

amusements and the results would
come out anywhere from eight to
fourteen, depending. apparently. on
how many times we counted the
twins
One queer thing about them was
that while Senior Cidaro was Spanish
and madame French. the children
were, to all appearances, English.
Their names were English. at least.
and English was the language they
romped and scolded in. Senior could
speak a little very poor French, be-
sides his own tongue. and madame
had little rudimentary English. SO
the children talked Spanish to their
papa and French to their mother.
Now here is where you will per-
ceive that this tale isn't work of
fiction, but. as I said at the beginning.
an accurate account Of the facts. For,
in any fictional narrative. the pres
ence of eight children-that has al
ways been my theory of the number
ALL under fourteen years old. on any
sort of ship, let alone cramped-up
little thousand-ton cargo boat. would
d
hardly endurable to the rest of the
passengers.
AS a matter of fact. those children
charmed US out of our wits. For my
SELF l know that the moment Helen
bumped her heavy tin suit case into
my legs and locked up with star
tied, apologetic little smile and begged
my pardon, l felt absurdly pleased
over the incident, took the ridiculous
thing from her and asked her where
she wanted 1t put. And when she
smiled again and confessed that she
didn't know, felt that she and were
old friends The same thing was evil
IDENTIFY true of the other passengers.
Even the Atkinsons came out Of their
corner and lent hand at the business
of making the new arrivals feel COM
Portable and at home.
1t wasn't matter of novelty either.
No matter how many times you for
got Henry's swing, which the boat
swain rigged for him from a boom be-
tween two of the deck houses and col
lided with him, in the course of an at
tempted promenade up and down the
narrow deck, you always regretted
spelling his sport and stopped long
enough to help him work up again.
And if you happened to stumble over
Albert at the head of the dark COM
panionway just as the ship was taking
an ugly roll, it never occurred to you
that that was no place for child to
be playing with the ships quoits.
X
MIND you there was nothing an
AVA gelic about them. The boys were
crop-headed, 'square-toed little brats
and the girls wouldn't have been
called pretty by an impartial observ-
er, if you could have found one. They
were all miserably clad in thread
bare mourning for somebody. appar-
emily long since deceased. / suppose
the family finances had never been
equal to new wardrobe. They were
simply the best bred, pleasantest,
most wholly natural children you
ever saw.
1t wasn't until we had been Won
dering about them for day or two
and had got to taking them more or
less for granted, that we began 10
become aware of madame. Then we
perceived that she was quite as Won
derful as they were. You might take
her age at anywhere from twenty-six
to forty, depending on what age you
thought the more attractive. She told
me one evening that she was thirty
three. But that was just after she
had made a bet with me that she was
older than / was.
She wasn't pretty, any more than
her daughters were. But she could
sit down with a novel, all by herself
in some temporarily deserted part of
the deck, and in half an hour we'd all
be there, talking voluminously, If un-
gramma tically, in three languages. in
terpreting for one another, gossiping
about Central American politics or de-
riding the wild distractions of the
French engineer. Madame would sit
there, lazily at ease, keeping her place
in her novel with her finger and oc-
casionally opening it and reading a
paragraph to herself, as If perfectly
unconscious that she was the center
of 1T all.
One of the casuals had wonderful
contrivance that he used as a deck
chair, having bought it, he said. in
the bazaar at Panama. 1t was be-