“Out there on deck in a steamer chair.”
“Come along and let’s find her.”
Joanne linked her arm in her grandfather’s and together they appeared before Mrs. Selden. She looked up with a smile. “Well, doctor,” she began.
He dropped in her lap the open paper he had been holding. “What do you make out of that, madam?” he asked.
She bent her gaze upon it, then looked up with a puzzled smile. “What’s it all about, Gregory?” she inquired. “I can’t quite make it out. My Spanish might be up to it, but the handwriting baffles me.”
Dr. Selden settled himself in the chair by her side and took possession of the paper again. “Well, it seems that I am responsible for one more passenger than I bargained for.”
“What do you mean?” asked his wife.
The doctor spread out the paper on his knee and ran over the contents in glib Spanish, Joanne leaning on his shoulder the while.
Before he reached the last line she cried out excitedly: “The pony! the pony! That is what jaco means, isn’t it? Not the little black pony, Grad, not that, is it? Oh, Grad, did he give it to you?” She plumped down on her grandfather’s knee and tried to take the paper from him.
“Here, here, miss, go slow,” he cried. “That document is not for you. Now keep still while I explain. You remember that man Paulino Lopez whose son I doctored? Of course I couldn’t take any fee for a thing like that, but that does not suit my friend Lopez, so here comes this note, to the Señor Doctor, with the pony begging that I will accept the gift from my ‘grateful servant, Paulino Lopez de Machorro who kisses my hand.’ He has raised the little beast from a colt, it seems, and when I went to his house offered it to me with his house and all his possessions. Knowing the Spanish habit of placing one’s entire establishment at the disposal of the merest acquaintance, I refused to accept, which was the proper thing to do. He placed himself at my feet theoretically; I answered in kind and I supposed that was the last of it. But, no, here comes this; the pony is below, the man who brought him has returned and here am I in a quandary. Now, what in the mischief is to be done? We have no stable in Washington and who would look after him? I don’t see how we are to keep him.”