She is the most annoying woman. "If you knew so much, why didn't you stop it?" I asked.
"Why should I stop it?" she answered, with the most exasperating calm. "I always wanted Nan and Larry to marry. But I always believed in a little discipline, too. When young people have merely to cry for a thing to get it—it doesn't do them any lasting good."
To escape the quizzical eyes of auntie, I looked back down the stairs; and if there weren't Carmen Whiffle and General Podesta sitting at a table and the fat majordomo himself opening a bottle of wine for them!
"Well!" I gasped to Ned.
"Yes," said Ned. "The rumor is that she may be the Señora Podesta any time she pleases. And if she had learned from Ned or some other indiscreet young or old officer that we were to land to-night—it would have saved Podesta from making a rather ridiculous entry into the city, wouldn't it?"
"What a schemer!" I cried.
"Yes," smiled Ned—"everybody schemers but our own selves. I spoke a word to the flag-lieutenant to-day—he's a classmate—to put in a word for me for the landing party to the Old Man."
"Your courage and your brains," I began—"or was it your knowledge of the language——"
"The fleet," interrupted Ned, "is crowded with officers of courage and brains. And I am not alone on the language end of it. But I was the only officer with a wife and two children ashore. And, as we hadn't seen each other for a year, the Old Man thought it mightn't be a bad idea for me to come ashore and have an eye out for them."
By this time Nan and Larry had passed onto the latticed balcony, and Nan's mother to her room; and Ned was hugging Neddo and Anna together.