"They
believe I've only to wave a wand, and get them anything they want.
I thought I'd be safe from them on board a yacht."
Livingstone, in ignorance of what was coming, squirmed
apprehensively.
"But it seems," the senator went on, " I'm at the mercy of a
conspiracy. The women folk want me to do something for this fellow
Marshall. If they had their way, they'd send him to the Court of
St. James. And old Hardy, too, tackled me about him. So did Miss
Cairns.
And then Marshall himself got me behind the wheel-house, and I
thought he was going to tell me how good he was, too I But he
didn't."
As though the joke were on himself, the senator laughed
appreciatively.
"Told me, instead, that Hardy ought to be a vice-admiral."
Livingstone, also, laughed, with the satisfied air of one who
cannot be tricked.
"They fixed it up between them," he explained, " each was to put in
a good word for the other." He nodded eagerly. "That's what I
think."
There were moments during the cruise when Senator Hanley would have
found relief in dropping his host overboard. With mock deference,
the older man inclined his head.
"That's what you think, is it?" he asked. "Livingstone," he added,
"you certainly are a great judge of men!"
The next morning, old man Marshall woke with a lightness at his
heart that had been long absent. For a moment, conscious only that
he was happy, he lay between sleep and waking, frowning up at his
canopy of mosquito net, trying to realize what change had come to
him.
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