Evening star., 1924-07-06


ly shaped bits of cast iron with sail
cloth. but it was wonderfully COM
Portable to sit in. You could sit up
straight to read, or lie out fiat to sleep.
or swing. half.ssclining with the roll
of the slip. just by wishing to do so.
You thought of the position you want
ed and the chair, If 1t was a chair,
French engineer, could explain why.
After the inundation. the unlucky
casual who bought 1t spent most Of
the voyage on his feet, because some
member of the family was always try
ing 1t out and exclaiming over it's
wonders. They always popped out Of
II the moment the casual hove in sight.
chairs of their own, and as he was as
badly infatuated as any of the rest Of
us. these relinquishments availed him
nothing. 1t finally came to be re-
garded as madame's chair, and after
she had confessed that she generally
came out late, when the deck was de-
serted. and spent the night in It,. he
d.
PUT. If I have implied that all of us,
the whole passenger list, together
with the officers and the crew, became
mere satellites revolving in somewhat
irregular orbits around the family Of
Senor Cidaro, / have been guilty of an
inaccuracy. We did, with the sole ex.
ception of the Englishman. Mr..
Brangwyn never made one of the group
that loitered the hours away within
mailing distance of madame's chair. He
never impersonated wild animals for
Henry and Albert or took Helen on
his lap and told her story. Three
times day. when madame came down
into the dining saloon. he bowed to her
graWely across the captains table.
And that was all AS this went on
from day to day, our vague discomfort
at MS remotely isolated superiority
gave place to indignation. But he
seemed as unconscious of that as he
was Of everything else.
l don't know quite how il came
ABOUT for Senior Cidaro never talked
al all and. so far as know, madame
never talked about him. but 1t wasn't
long before We found that we were
fully acquainted with their history-if
you can call perfectly passive ac-
ceptance of events by that name.
The senior belonged. it appeared. to
Central American family that had once
been rich and powerful Or. to put
the thing in more accurate and or
oeriy way. they had got themselves
INTO position of political advantage
and had made 1t pay. The senior him
self had been sent to Paris in his
youth to acquire an education and
study law. Instead of doing either
or these things, however, he had i'm
mediately fallen in love with madame
and married her. 1t being apparent
to his family that no further studies
were to be expected Of him, they got
MIN a 1oo-pardon me, a post: namely
the consulate at Liverpool. and saw to
il that his post. was made appropri-
ately remunerative. The senior went
to Liverpool and lived there for years.
devoting his pay and his perquisites
to feeding and clothing and, generally
speaking. allowing to grow up his
steadily enlarging family Then his
people at home lost their influence
and the government promptly aboI-
ished his job. or. at any rate, abol-
ished his pay, which came to the same
thing. So now they were coming
home to a country his wife and chill
dren had never seen
1t was hard for any Of US to think
of anything else they could have
done. The senior was evidently per-
fectly helpless; incapable Of any real
work. that would earn a liNng for
himself alone, to say nothing Of the
hostages he had given to fortune
And yet what could he hope to gain
by coming back was equally hard to
figure out. One could imagine the
sort of welcome they would get both
from the government and from his
discredited and powerless relatives.
The more we thought about the situa-
| tion the more acutely unhappy we
| became. Indeed, it got to the point
| where we couldn't think or talk of
anything else. What the deuce was
| to become of the family Of Senior
Cidaro? We asked the question in
one form or another a dozen times
a day.