“Dinner? Where’s dinner?” Adair was off again. He picked up a bell and rang it forcefully. Everyone, except the famous Mrs. O’Malley and the Chinese cook came running. People came out of doors, in through the arches of the patio, and stuck their heads out from windows. Everyone thought that there was something radically wrong. When they saw that it was just the American again, they disappeared as quickly as they came.
The old women shook their heads. Would he never learn, they wondered, that there was no necessity to rush anything, that if you let things just go their own quiet, placid way, they would eventually work themselves out. They couldn’t understand this man who had come to them as their master. Already, thanks to the guide of the morning, legends about him and his wrath were spreading around the place. The wireless that civilization knows is fast, but the grapevine among the Mexican Indians was even more effective.
When he saw the commotion he had caused, Adair MacKenzie sat down, and shortly dinner appeared, as it would have appeared even though he had done nothing.
The dinner was good and the cool fruit juices that followed it were good. And everyone sat, as long as the warmth of the day permitted, in the patio under the tropical sky and talked some, sat silent more, for it was all very peaceful.
“So you’re not going to work on that smuggling story after all?” Adair MacKenzie asked Walker just before they all got up to go in.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Walker answered carefully. “Feel the need of a little rest now and I like this place and I like the people and it’s hard to tear myself away.”
“We thank you, don’t we?” Adair took his daughter’s hand in his. He felt vaguely that there was something more serious in all of this than appeared on the surface, but just now he was too tired to question. He squeezed Alice’s hand.