In one of the side caverns off the main dining-room of the Hotel
Kast, the yacht's owner, breakfasting with the yacht's tutelary
goddess and the goddess's determined pursuer, discussed the
blockade. Though Miss Polly Brewster kept up her end of the
conversation, her thoughts were far upon a breeze-swept mountain-
side. How, she wondered, had that dry and strange hermit of the
wilds known the news before the city learned it? With her wonder
came annoyance over her lost wager. The beetle man, she judged,
would be coolly superior about it. So she delivered herself of
sundry stinging criticisms regarding the conduct of the Caracunan
Administration in having stupidly involved itself in a blockade.
She even spoke of going to see the President and apprising him of
her views.
"I'd like to tell him how to run this foolish little island," said
she, puckering a quaintly severe brow.
"Now is the appointed time for you to plunge in and change the
course of empire," her father suggested to her. "There's an
official morning reception at ten o'clock. We're invited."
"Then I shan't go. I wouldn't give the old goose the satisfaction
of going to his fiesta.
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