"Here we are, and this is odd, too. 'C 51. Perrigord, Mr. and Mrs. Leslie.' So-ho!"
"What's odd about that? Who are they?"
"You remember my telling you about a very, very great highbrow and aesthete who was aboard, and had written reams of ecstatic articles about Uncle Jules's genius? And I said I hoped for his sake as well as the kids who wanted to see the fighting that there'd be a performance tomorrow night?"
"Ah! Perrigord?"
"Yes. Both he and she are awfully aesthetic, you know. He writes poetry — you know, the kind you can't understand, all about his soul being like a busted fencer-rail or something. And I believe he's a dramatic critic, too, although you can't make much sense out of what he writes there, either. I can't anyway. But he says the only dramatists are the French dramatists. He says Uncle Jules has the greatest classic genius since Moliere. Maybe you've seen him about? Tall, thin chap with flat, blond hair, and his wife wears a monocle?" She giggled. "They do about two hundred circuits of the promenade-deck every morning, and never speak to anybody, those people!"
"H'm!" said Morgan, remembering the dinner-table that night. "Oh, yes. But I didn't know you knew them. II this fellow has written all that stuff about your uncle—"
"Oh, I don't know them," she disclaimed, opening her eyes wide. "They're English, you see. They'll write volumes about you, and discuss every one of your good and
bad points minutely; but they won't say how-de-do unless you've been properly introduced."
All this analysis was over the head of the good Captain Valvick, who had grown restive and was puffing through hi* moustache with strange noises, as though he wanted to I if admitted through a closed door.
"Ay got de whisky poured out," he vouchsafed. "And you put in de soda. Iss it decided what we are going to do? What iss decided, anyway? Sometime we got to go to bed."