“I mean you can’t be all day getting out of here.” The voice in back answered positively.
“W-w-why, you old—old—old,” Adair spluttered. He could think of no epithet appropriate and yet forceful enough to call his critic in the presence of the girls. So his spluttering died away as he brandished his cane and just stood and looked.
“Daddy, daddy,” Alice put a soft hand on his arm. “Do come. We are blocking the view.”
“Nothing to see down there anyway,” Adair returned. “These Americans,” he went on talking loudly and looking back at the man above him, “come down here and think they can run everything. Want to tell us to move on. Who do they think they are anyway?”
“Sh, daddy.” Alice was worried for fear her father would start a fight, even while she was secretly amused that he was accusing a fellow countryman of doing the very thing that he was guilty of. “We must get down and out so that we can find how Grace is,” she added tactfully.
“Well, I’m hurrying just as fast as these Mexicans will let me,” Adair answered. “I always said they were the slowest, most inconsiderate people in the world.”
Adair was wrong in what he said, and he knew it. As he was now sputtering about them being inconsiderate, so often he had sputtered because of their patient consideration for other people. Then he had said that they were too polite.
However, Adair prided himself on his willingness to change his mind. “Only dunces never contradict themselves,” he often said.
Now, Alice and the girls were themselves moving along as fast as they could behind him, so, though he continued to mutter and even brandish his cane at others whom he suspected of calling at him in Spanish, he was soon safely out in the aisle and they all hurried up the stairs and out.
“O-o-ooh, but that was close,” Laura’s eyes were dancing at the recollection of the scene in the stands as she and Nan stepped out into the street.