“You shall if you stay to lunch,” Seyd said. “Billy makes gorgeous biscuit, and they’ll go finely with the honey.”
“If you can eat bacon—we have only that and a few canned things,” Billy added, a little dubiously, and would have extended the list of shortcomings only that she broke in:
“Just what I like. I’m tired of Mexican cooking, and I am dreadfully hungry.”
That this was no idle assertion she presently proved, and while she ate of their rough food with the appetite of perfect health their acquaintance progressed with the leaps and bounds natural to youth. Before the end of the meal she had drawn Billy completely out of his painful bashfulness, and he was telling her with great pride of his beautiful sister while she contemplated her photograph with head held delicately askew.
“Yes, she’s fair,” he told her, adding with great pride, “but not a bit like me.”
“The most wonderful hair!” Seyd volunteered. “Darkest Titian above a skin of milk.”
“Oh, you make me envious!” she cried, with real feeling. “I love red hair. Luisa Zuluaga, my schoolmate in Brussels, had it combined with great black Spanish eyes. She got her colors from an Irish great grandfather who came over a century ago to coin pesos for the Mexican mint. Now, why couldn’t I have had them?”
Observing the finespun cloud that flew like a dark mist around the ivory face, Seyd could not find it in his heart to blame her grandfather, and, if good taste debarred him from saying it, the belief was nevertheless expressed through the permitted language of the eyes. Perhaps this accounted for the suddenness with which her long dark lashes swept down over certain mischievous lights.
Any but an expert in feminine psychology might indeed have found himself puzzled by certain phases of her manner. Its sympathy, addressing Billy, would give place to a slight reserve with Seyd, then this would melt and give place to unaffected friendliness. Occasionally, too, she offered all the witchery of her smiles, yet the hypothetical expert would never have suspected her of coquetry. The feeling was far too mischievous for the fencing of sex. Its key was to be found in the thought that passed in her mind. “ ‘Almost pretty enough to marry,’ you said. The trouble is that my girlish beauty is in inverse ratio to my future fatness. What a pity!”
Yet this little touch of pique was never sufficiently pronounced to interfere with her real enjoyment. As for them—it was a golden occasion. If they ate little, they still feasted their eyes on the face that bloomed like a rich flower in the soft shadows of the adobe hut, their ears on her low laughter and soft woman’s speech. They found it hard to believe when she sprang up with a little cry: “I have been here two hours! Now I have earned my scolding. The madre only let me come under a solemn promise to be back before sunset.”
Had they been unaware of the principal concomitant in the charm of the hour, knowledge would have been forced upon them when she rode away, for, though the birds still sang and the hot sun poured a flood of light and heat down on the bench, somehow things looked and felt cold and gray.
And she? Going downgrade an afterglow of smiles lent force to her murmur: “Gringos or no, they are very nice.”
VIII
A hard gallop of eight miles carried Francesca to the forks where the path to and from Santa Gertrudis joined the main valley trail, and she had traveled no more than a hundred yards beyond before she was roused from renewed musings by the thud of hoofs. Turning in her saddle, she saw Sebastien coming along the valley trail at a gallop. Passing the mozo, whose beast had lagged, the hacendado pulled his beast down to a trot, and as Tomas, answering a question, nodded backward toward the hills, vexation swept the girl’s face.
It cleared, however, as quickly, and while waiting for Sebastien she measured him with a narrow glance. The straight, lithe figure, easy carriage, dark, quiet face could stand inspection, and she paid unconscious tribute. “If I hadn’t gone to Europe I suppose—” A decided shake of the head completed while dismissing the thought. In the next breath she murmured, “Now for a fight.” Yet her expression, saluting him, displayed no apprehension.
“Yes, I was at Santa Gertrudis.” She quietly answered his question. “Two of our people shot one of the gringos as he was leaving our place, and the good mamá would have it that it was our duty to cure him.”
“Ah! the good mother?” He raised his brows. “And she chose you for her doctor?”
“As you see.”
“Yes, I see. ‘No, Francesca, thou canst not go. It would not be right for a young girl—well, if you must—’ I hear it as though I had been there, and wonder that the señora, who was brought up in the letter of our conventions, should send her daughter to a gringo camp with only a mozo for escort. But Don Luis? Is he also mad?”
“No, only wise.” She answered with irritating simplicity. “Take care that you do not put heavier strains on a slight kinship. Third, fifth, tenth, just what is the degree of our cousinship?”
“God knows!” He shrugged. “The slighter the better. ’Twill serve till replaced by a closer.”
“Which will be never.”
“Only the gods say ‘never.’ ” He quoted the proverb. “But returning to your amigos, the gringos—”
“My amigos?”
“You have received and repaid their visits. But listen! It is not that I would set bounds for your freedom, but if you had stood, as I have, on a street corner in Ciudad Mexico, and had heard the gringo tourists pass comments on our women—Dios! I choke at the thought! If you but realized their coxcombry, conceit, the contempt in which they
