My Buried Treasure by Richard Harding Davis
page 38 of 54 (70%)
page 38 of 54 (70%)
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it. And then, with "ex-Minister" on his visiting cards, and a sense
of duty well performed, for the rest of his life he could join the other expatriates in Paris. Just before dinner, the cruiser RALEIGH having discovered the whereabouts of the SERAPIS by wireless, entered the harbor, and Admiral Hardy came to the yacht to call upon the senator, in whose behalf he had been scouring the Caribbean Seas. Having paid his respects to that personage, the admiral fell boisterously upon Marshall. The two old gentlemen were friends of many years. They had met, officially and unofficially, in many strange parts of the world. To each the chance reunion was a piece of tremendous good fortune. And throughout dinner the guests of Livingstone, already bored with each other, found in them and their talk of former days new and delightful entertainment. So much so that when, Marshall having assured them that the local quarantine regulations did not extend to a yacht, the men departed for Las Bocas, the women insisted that he and admiral remain behind. It was for Marshall a wondrous evening. To foregather with his old friend whom he had known since Hardy was a mad midshipman, to sit at the feet of his own charming countrywomen, to listen to their soft, modulated laughter, to note how quickly they saw that to him the evening was a great event, and with what tact each contributed to make it the more memorable; all served to wipe out the months of bitter loneliness, the stigma of failure, the sense of undeserved neglect. In the moonlight, on the cool quarter- deck, they sat, in a half-circle, each of the two friends telling tales out of school, |
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