Page:The man on horseback (IA manonhorseback00abdurich).pdf/79

 "Can't blame you for laughing," sighed Vyvyan. "I am rather rotten at the game. Was 'steenth secretary at the Washington Embassy and just got the jolly old boot for most frightful incompetency."

"What are you going to do next?"

"Go home and devil my brother's soul. He's the Duke, y'know, and has lots of what you Americans call pull. I s'pose he'll get me some secretaryship in one of those interesting and unwashed Balkan principalities, but he'll have to wait a while until this Washington mess blows over. He won't like it a bit. You see, I'm not over-flush with the ready; rather stony, in fact, and my brother is as stingy as anything. Never mind, old dear, have one more of the liquid?"

"No, thanks, I've had a nose full."

"Right. Let's go down and eat. Ship's filled with Germans and Austrians and all that sort, eatin' peas with steel knives and inhalin' soup through their jolly old ears, so we two might as well sit together and show 'em a solid Anglo-Saxon front, what? Let's go feed!"

That day and the following saw Tom Graves and Lord Vyvyan continuously together. Occasionally the former saw Bertha Wedekind, usually accompanied by a couple of tall, lean Germans who, the Englishman said, belonged to the German Embassy in Washington. Tom was jealous, but he had to grin and bear it. He knew how stubborn the girl was and that she would doubtless live up to her threat and complain to the captain if he tried to address her.

He spoke to but few of the other passengers. He was garrulous and sociable by nature. Too, he had always liked the Germans whom he had known in the Northwest, chiefly Martin Wedekind, though, when